Lojban For Beginnersvelcli befi la

lojban. bei loi coa cilre

Robin Turner Nick Nicholas

Lojban For Beginnersvelcli befi la lojban. bei loi coa cilre by Robin Turner and Nick Nicholas Published 2002

Table of Contents
Prefacelidne prosa ............................................................................................................................................... i 1. Sounds, names and a few attitudes............................................................................................................... 1 Vowels ........................................................................................................................................................... 1 Consonants ................................................................................................................................................... 1 Special Characters........................................................................................................................................ 2 Alphabet........................................................................................................................................................ 2 Correct pronunciation............................................................................................................................... 3 Lojban with attitude! ................................................................................................................................... 3 Lojban Names (cmene) ................................................................................................................................ 4 Lojban words as names............................................................................................................................... 7 Answers to Exercises ................................................................................................................................... 7

2. Relationships and Places .............................................................................................................................. 10

3. Commands, Questions, and Possessives.................................................................................................... 21

Names and relationships .......................................................................................................................... 10 Take your places... ..................................................................................................................................... 11 Determining place structure..................................................................................................................... 13 gismu as sumti .............................................................................................................................................. 14 Changing Places......................................................................................................................................... 15 Summary..................................................................................................................................................... 17 Answers to exercises ................................................................................................................................. 17

4. Numbers, and a few more articles............................................................................................................... 31

Commands.................................................................................................................................................. 21 Softening the blow... .................................................................................................................................. 22 Questions .................................................................................................................................................... 22 Possessives.................................................................................................................................................. 25 More Possessives........................................................................................................................................ 27 Summary..................................................................................................................................................... 29 Answers to Exercises ................................................................................................................................. 29

5. Times, days, dates (and abstractions) ......................................................................................................... 41

Basic numbers............................................................................................................................................. 31 Numbers and articles ................................................................................................................................ 32 Proportions ................................................................................................................................................. 34 Quantities.................................................................................................................................................... 36 Number Questions..................................................................................................................................... 37 Summary..................................................................................................................................................... 38 Answers to Exercises ................................................................................................................................. 39

What is the time?........................................................................................................................................ 41 Times and Events....................................................................................................................................... 43 Times and Events, Improved: Conversion ............................................................................................. 43 Times and Events, Improved #2: sumti tcita ........................................................................................... 45

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6. Time and Spacebasic Lojban tenses ..................................................................................................... 54

Days and Months ....................................................................................................................................... 45 Dates ............................................................................................................................................................ 47 Summary..................................................................................................................................................... 49 Answers to Exercises ................................................................................................................................. 51

7. Getting Personal: Pro-sumti and more abstractions ................................................................................. 67

Terminators................................................................................................................................................. 54 Tenses .......................................................................................................................................................... 56 Time with sumti .......................................................................................................................................... 56 Time and selbri............................................................................................................................................ 58 Space ............................................................................................................................................................ 59 More negativity .......................................................................................................................................... 61 Summary..................................................................................................................................................... 63 Answers to exercises ................................................................................................................................. 64

8. Swapping things round: conversion and simple lujvo ............................................................................ 81

Referring back ............................................................................................................................................ 67 Assigning pro-sumti ................................................................................................................................... 69 Acronyms.................................................................................................................................................... 70 Direct quotations........................................................................................................................................ 71 Indirect quotations..................................................................................................................................... 72 Some more personal pro-sumti ................................................................................................................. 74 Summary..................................................................................................................................................... 75 Answers to Exercises ................................................................................................................................. 77

selbri conversions ....................................................................................................................................... 81

sumti conversions ....................................................................................................................................... 82 lujvo .............................................................................................................................................................. 84

9. Let me qualify that: internal sumti and relative clauses .......................................................................... 91

Negative lujvo ............................................................................................................................................. 85 Reflexives and reciprocals ........................................................................................................................ 87 Summary..................................................................................................................................................... 88 Answers to Exercises ................................................................................................................................. 89

10. Cause and Effect ......................................................................................................................................... 105

Internal sumti .............................................................................................................................................. 91 More internal sumti .................................................................................................................................... 92 Internal sumti tcita ...................................................................................................................................... 94 Relative clauses .......................................................................................................................................... 95 kea ............................................................................................................................................................... 96 Restrictive and non-restrictive ................................................................................................................. 98 Summary..................................................................................................................................................... 99 Answers to Exercises ............................................................................................................................... 100

Physical causation.................................................................................................................................... 105 Motivation................................................................................................................................................. 106 Justification and Implication .................................................................................................................. 107 Converting causes.................................................................................................................................... 108

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11. Putting it together: Lojban connectives.................................................................................................. 117

Connecting sentences .............................................................................................................................. 109 Why?.......................................................................................................................................................... 111 Summary................................................................................................................................................... 112 Answers to Exercises ............................................................................................................................... 113

12. Aspect, Vocatives, Loan Words, and Equalities.................................................................................... 131

Types of logical connectives ................................................................................................................... 117 Connecting sumti ...................................................................................................................................... 119 Connectives in tanru................................................................................................................................. 121 Connecting bridi tails ............................................................................................................................... 123 Asking about connectives ....................................................................................................................... 125 Summary................................................................................................................................................... 126 Answers to exercises ............................................................................................................................... 127

13. Keeping it flowing: Textual cmavo .......................................................................................................... 144

Aspect ........................................................................................................................................................ 131 More Aspects............................................................................................................................................ 133 Vocatives ................................................................................................................................................... 133 Loan words ............................................................................................................................................... 135 Equalities................................................................................................................................................... 137 Summary................................................................................................................................................... 139 Answers to exercises ............................................................................................................................... 140

14. Why didnt I think of that before? More connectives ......................................................................... 155

Lojban with lots more attitude............................................................................................................... 144 My attitudinals! All mine! (And you?) ................................................................................................. 146 Discursives................................................................................................................................................ 147 Erasure....................................................................................................................................................... 148 Bits and pieces .......................................................................................................................................... 150 Summary................................................................................................................................................... 151 Answers to exercises ............................................................................................................................... 152

15. Singled out: Isolating specific places ..................................................................................................... 166

Forethought connectives......................................................................................................................... 155 Non-logical connectives.......................................................................................................................... 157 tanru grouping .......................................................................................................................................... 159 Summary................................................................................................................................................... 161 Answers to exercises ............................................................................................................................... 162

A. Unsettled Business...................................................................................................................................... 183

Indirect questions..................................................................................................................................... 166 Properties .................................................................................................................................................. 168 From sumti to abstraction: tua ............................................................................................................... 171 Raising: jai ................................................................................................................................................. 174 Summary................................................................................................................................................... 178 Answers to exercises ............................................................................................................................... 179

Embedded voa ......................................................................................................................................... 183 Unfilled places in ka-abstractions .......................................................................................................... 184

B. Vocabulary .................................................................................................................................................... 186

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Prefacelidne prosa
This document is an introductory course on Lojban, consisting of fifteen lessons. It has been authored by Robin Turner and Nick Nicholas, and gives a gentle introduction to the structure of the language. Robin authored lessons 18 and 1011 in 1999; Nick added to the existing lessons, and authored lessons 9 and 1215, in 2001.

The material covered in this course should be sufficient to allow the learner to understand most of the Lojban they are likely to see in the online Lojban discussion groups, or in the publications of the Logical Language Group. For information on Lojban, please contact the Logical Language Group: Bob LeChevalier The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane Fairfax, VA 22031 U.S.A. (+1 703) 385-0273 <[email protected]>
http://www.lojban.org

The document What is Lojban? (available online at

http://www.lojban.org/publications/level0.html) is a general introduction to the language. It

should be available from the same place you obtained this document.

Lojban is likely to be very different to the kinds of languages you are familiar withwhich certainly include English. If a point of grammar or logic seems inscrutable at first, dont hesitate to move on, and come back to it later. Likewise, some of the exercises are trickier than others (particularly the translation exercises at the end of each lesson.) If you cant work out the answer to a particular question, feel free to skip itbut do look at the answer to the question, as there are often useful hints on Lojban usage in there. The answers to the exercises are at the end of each lesson. Occasionally we use brackets to clarify the grammatical structure of Lojban in our examples. These brackets are not part of official Lojban orthography, and are included only for paedagogical purposes.

Robin is English (residing in Turkey), and Nick is Greek-Australian (residing in the U.S.A.) So dont be surprised if you see some unfamiliar language usage in this text. We are particularly unrepentant about using Commonwealth spelling.

Our thanks to the Lojbanists who have reviewed these lessons; in particular, Pierre Abbat, John Clifford, John Cowan, Bjrn Gohla, Arnt Richard Johansen, John Jorgensen, Nora Tansky LeChevalier, Jorge Llambas, Robin Lee Powell, Adam Raizen, Anthony Roach, Tim Smith, Rob Speer, Brion Vibber. Thanks also to Robin Lee Powell for providing the infrastructure for publishing the course in progress, and to Paul Reinerfelt for his help in producing the TeX version of the text.
nio le dei seltcidu cu te ctuca be loi coa cilre bei fo la lojban. gie se pagbu lo pamumei .i le goi cu se finti lao gy. Robin Turner gy. joi lao gy. Nick Nicholas gy. goi la nitcion. gie frili jai junria fo le stura be le bangu .i la robin. finti le 1moi bii 8moi .e le 10moi bii 11moi pagbu ca la 1999nan .i la nitcion. jmina fi le pu zasti pagbu gie finti le 9moi .e le 12moi bii 15moi vau ca la 2001nan.

Prefacelidne prosa nio lei datni poi se cusku le dei te ctuca cu pei banzu lenu kaenria le cilre lenu jimpe pisoa loi lojbo poi lakne fa lenu tcidu kea vecuu le jondatnymue ke lojbo casnu girzu .a le se prigau be la lojbangirz. .i mui tua loi tcila pe la lojban. ko te notci fo la lojbangirz. noi se judri zoi gy.

Bob LeChevalier The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane Fairfax, VA 22031 U.S.A. (+1 703) 385-0273 <[email protected]>
http://www.lojban.org gy. .i le seltcidu pou lae lu la lojban mo. liu zienoi kae se cpacu fi le jondatnymue tui zoi gy. http://www.lojban.org/publications/level0.html gy. cu nalsteci cfari bo skicu le bangu .i baa kae cpacu le goi tui le jaitui cpacu be le dei seltcidu nio la lojban. cu laa mutce frica le bangu poi slabu do ziepoi juo se cmima le glico .i ko fau lo dai nu lo nandu pe le gerna .a le logji cu simlu loka toe ke frili se jimpe coa lenu tcidu cu zukte lenu rivbi tua le nandu gie krefu troci tua ri baku .i paabo suo cipra jufra cu zmadu suo cipra jufra leni tcica nandu .i goi fa rau le nunfanva cipra jufra pe le fanmo be ro te ctuca pagbu .i zao lenu do na pui jdice le danfu be lo preti kei ko cou troci gie kui catlu le danfu be le cipra jufra .imuibo le danfu soiroi jarco lo plixau se stidi pe lenu pilno la lojban. .i le danfu be le cipra jufra cu diklo le fanmo be ro te ctuca pagbu nio mi soiroi pilno lo girzu sinxa lerfu mui lenu ciksi le gerna stura be la lojban. beo pe le mi mupli seltcidu .i le girzu sinxa lerfu genai pagbu le se zanru ke lojbo ke nunciska ciste gi se pilno fi le nu poo ctuca nio la robin. cu glico gie xabju le gugdrturkie .ije la nitcion. cu xelso sralo gie xabju le merko .i sekiubo ko na se spaji tua loi glibau selpli pe le dei seltcidu ziepoi na slabu do .i mi rau toe xenru lenu pilno le glico se jitro gugde bo girzu ke valsi lerfu se cuxna ciste nio mi ckire le lojbo poi cipygau fi le kamdrani le dei te ctuca zienou la. pier.abat. joi la biorn.golys. joi la djan.iorgensen. joi. la .arnt.rikard.iuxansen. goi la tsali geu joi la xorxes.jambi,as. joi la djan.kau,n. joi la djan.klifyrd. goi la pycyn. geu joi la noras.tanskis.lecevaLIER. joi la rabin.lis.pau,el. joi la .adam.reizen. joi la .antonis.routc. joi la tim.smit. joi la rab.spir. joi la braiyn.viber. .i ckire jia la rabin.lis.pau,el. cee lenu sabji le jicmu be lenu gubgau le ve ctuca cao lenu finti peeje la paul.rainerfelt. cee lenu sidju lenu cupra le seltcidu petai la tex.

ii

Chapter 1. Sounds, names and a few attitudes

The first thing you need to do when you learn a foreign language is to become familiar with the sounds of the language and how they are written, and the same goes for Lojban. Fortunately, Lojban sounds (phonemes) are fairly straightforward.

Vowels
a

There are six vowels in Lojban.

e i o

as in father (not as in hat) as in get as in machine or (Italian) vino (not as in hit) as in bold or morenot as in so (this should be a pure sound.) as in cool (not as in but)

These are pretty much the same as vowels in Italian or Spanish. The sixth vowel, y, is called a schwa in the language trade, and is pronounced like the first and last As in America (thats English America, not Spanish.) Its the sound that comes out when the mouth is completely relaxed. Two vowels together are pronounced as one sound (diphthong). Some examples are:
ai au ei oi ia

ie iu

ua ue uo ui

as in high as in how as in hey as in boy like German Ja like yeah like you as in waah!, or French quoi as in question as in quote like we, or French oui

Double vowels are rare. The only examples are ii, which is pronounced like English ye (as in Oh come all ye faithful) or Chinese yi, and uu, pronounced like woo.

Consonants
g

Most Lojban consonants are the same as English, but there are some exceptions:
c j x

always g as in gum, never g as in gem sh, as in ship as in measure or French bonjour as in German Bach, Spanish Jose or Arabic Khaled

Chapter 1. Sounds, names and attitudes

The English sounds ch and j are written as tc and dj. Lojban doesnt use the letters H, Q or W.

Special Characters

Lojban does not require any punctuation, but some special characters (normally used in punctuation in other languages) affect the way Lojban is pronounced. The only one of these characters which is obligatory in Lojban is the apostrophe; in fact the apostrophe is regarded as a proper letter of Lojban. An apostrophe separates two vowels, preventing them from being pronounced together (as a diphthong); it is itself pronounced like an h. For example, ui is normally pronounced we, but ui is oohee. A full stop (period) is a short pause to stop words running into each other. The rules of Lojban make it easier for one word to run into another when the second word begins with a vowel; so any word starting with a vowel conventionally has a full stop placed in front of it. Commas are rare in Lojban, but can be used to stop two vowels blurring together when you dont want to use an apostrophe (which would put a h between them). No Lojban words have commas, but theyre sometimes used in writing non-Lojban names, for example pi,ER. (Pierre), as opposed to pier. (P-yerr), pi.ER. (Pee; Ehr), or piER. (Piherr).

Capital letters are not normally used in Lojban. We use them in non-Lojban words (like Pierre) when the stress of a word is different from the Lojban norm. The norm is to put the stress on the last-but-one syllable; so, for example, kurmikce nurse is kurMIKce, not KURmikce. The name Juliette would be written DJUli,et. if pronounced in an English way, but juLIET. if pronounced as in French.

Alphabet

In most language textbooks, you get the alphabet of the language together with its sounds. Letters (lerfu) turn out to be even more important than usual in Lojban, so we might as well go through their names quickly. Consonants are straightforward: the name of a consonant letter is that letter, plus y. So the consonant letters of Lojban, b, c, d, f, g ..., are called by., cy., dy., fy., gy.... in Lojban (using the full stop as weve just described.)

Vowels would be called .ay, .ey, .iy, but that would be rather difficult to pronounce. Instead, they are handled by following the vowel sound with the word bu, which basically means letter. So the vowels of Lojban are: .abu, .ebu, .ibu, .obu, .ubu, ybu.

The apostrophe is regarded as a proper letter in Lojban, and is called .yy.. To some people, this sounds like a cough; to other, like uh-huh (when it means Yes rather than No.) Lojban has ways of refering to most letters you can think of; see The Complete Lojban Language, Chapter 17 for details. If you have the urge to spell out your name in Lojban and have an H, Q, or W to deal with, you can use .yy.bu, ky.bu and vy.bu. So Schwarzenegger is spelt in Lojban as:
sy. cy. .yybu vybu. .abu ry. zy. .ebu ny. .ebu gy. gy. .ebu ry.

And spelling that is a task the equal of anything the Terminator ever did!

Chapter 1. Sounds, names and attitudes Tip: When h is at the beginning of a name, you cannot transliterate it with , since that letter needs to occur between two vowels. In that case, you can either use another similar sound, such as x or f, or run the word in with its preceding word, so that the remains between two vowels. Thus, Jay Hinkelman can go into Lojban as djeis.xinklmn., djeis.finklmn., or djeiinklmn.

Exercise 1
Spell your name in Lojban (or at least something close enough to it to use the twenty-six letters of English we have learned, and the apostrophe.) No peeking at the backwe dont have the answer to this exercise there!

Correct pronunciation

You dont have to be very precise about Lojban pronunciation, because the phonemes are distributed so that it is hard to mistake one sound for another. This means that rather than one correct pronunciation, there is a range of acceptable pronunciationthe general principle is that anything is OK so long as it doesnt sound too much like something else. For example, Lojban r can be pronounced like the r in English, Scottish or French. Two things to be careful of, though, are pronouncing Lojban i and u like Standard British English hit and but (Northern English but is fine!). This is because non-Lojban vowels, particularly these two, are used to separate consonants by people who find them hard to say. For example, if you have problems spitting out the zd in zdani (house), you can say z daniwhere the is very short, but the final i has to be long.

Lojban with attitude!

If you tried pronouncing the vowel combinations above, youve already said some Lojban words. Lojban has a class of words called attitudinal indicators, which express how the speaker feels about something. The most basic ones consist of two vowels, sometimes with an apostrophe in the middle. Here are some of the most useful ones.
.ao .au .au .ie .ie .ii .iu .oi

.ua .ue .ue .ui .ui

.uu .uu

hope desire interest agreement approval fear (think of Eeek!) love complaint discovery, Ah, I get it! surprise wonder, Wow! happiness amusement repentance, Im sorry! pity, sympathy
Note: In English, people have started to avoid the word pity, because it has come to have associations of superiority. .uu is just the raw emotion: if you wanted to express pity in this

Chapter 1. Sounds, names and attitudes rather condescending way, youd probably say .uugaipity combined with a sense of superiority, or .uuvuepity combined with a sense of virtue. Then again, you would probably just keep your mouth shut.

You can make any of these into its opposite by adding nai, so .uinai means Im unhappy, .aunai is reluctance, .uanai is confusion (I dont get it,Duh...) and so on. You can also combine them. For example, .iu.uinai would mean I am unhappily in love. In this way you can even create words to express emotions which your native language doesnt have.

Attitudinal indicators are extremely useful, and it is well worth making an effort to learn the most common ones. One of the biggest problems people have when trying to speak in a foreign language is that, while theyve learnt how to buy a kilo of olives or ask the way to the post office, they cant express feelings, because many languages do this in a round-about way (outside group therapy, very few British people would say outright that they were sad, for example!) In Lojban you can be very direct, very briefly (there are ways of softening these emotions, which well get to in a later lesson). In fact, these attitudinals are so useful that some Lojbanists use them even when theyre writing in English, rather like emoticons (those e-mail symbols like ;-) :-( etc.).

Exercise 2
Using the attitudinal indicators above (including negatives), what might you say in the following situations? 1. Youve just realised where you left your keys. 2. Someone treads on your toes. 3. Youre watching a boring film. 4. Someones just told you a funny story. 5. You disagree with someone. 6. Someones just taken the last cookie in the jar. 7. You really dont like someone. 8. You are served a cold, greasy meal. 9. Your friend has just failed a test. 10. There is a large green beetle crawling towards you.

Lojban Names (cmene)

Watch any film where people dont know each others language. They start off saying things like Me Tarzan, which is as good a place to start learning Lojban as any. So here we go.
mie robin.

I-am-named Robin Im Robin

mie is related to mi, which is I, me and so on. Its a good example of the apostrophe separating two

vowels, and sounds a bit like me heh.

I am lucky because my name goes directly into Lojban without any changes. However, there are some rules for Lojban names which mean that some names have to be Lojbanised. This may sound

Chapter 1. Sounds, names and attitudes

strangeafter all, a name is a namebut in fact all languages do this to some extent. For example, English speakers tend to pronounce Jose something like Hozay, and Margaret in Chinese is Magelita. Some sounds just dont exist in some languages, so the first thing you need to do is rewrite the name so that it only contains Lojban sounds, and is spelt in a Lojban way.
Note: The catch here is, what version of the sounds will you be using? For English in particular, British and American vowels can be quite different. The British version of Robin is reasonably approximated by robin.; but the American version is closer to rabyn. or rab,n.. And within America and Britain, there is also a good deal of variation. So you should take the transliterations given below with a grain of salt.

Lets take the English name Susan. The two ss are pronounced differentlythe second one is actually a zand the a is not really an a sound, its the schwa we just mentioned. So Susan comes out in Lojban as suzyn.. You may have noticed the extra full stop (period) there. This is necessary because if you didnt pause, you might not know where the name ended and the next word began. In addition, if a name begins with a vowel, you need a full stop there as well. For example:
.an. .axmet.

.eduard.

.IBraxim. or .IBraim. .odin.

Anne Ahmet Edward Ibrahim Odin

You can also put a full stop in between a persons first and last names (though its not compulsory), so Jim Jones becomes djim.djonz.. An important rule for Lojbanising names is that the last letter of a cmene (Lojban name) must be a consonant. Again, this is to prevent confusion as to where a name ends, and what is and is not a name (all other Lojban words end in a vowel). We usually use s for this; so in Lojban, Mary becomes meris. , Joe becomes djos. and so on. An alternative is to leave out the last vowel, so Mary would become mer. or meir.. A few combinations of letters are illegal in Lojbanised names, because they can be confused with Lojban words: la, lai and doi. So Alabama cant be .alabamas. but needs to be .alybamas. , for example.

The final point is stress. As weve seen, Lojban words are stressed on the penultimate syllable, and if a name has different stress, we use capital letters. This means that the English and French names Robert come out differently in Lojban: the English name is robyt. in UK English, or rab,rt. in some American dialects, but the French is roBER. . To give an idea of how all this works, here are some names of famous people in their own language and in Lojban. English Margaret Thatcher Mick Jagger French Napoleon Bonaparte

say it!)

magryt.tatcys. (no th in Lojban because most people around the world cant mik.djagys. napole,ON.bonaPART.

Chapter 1. Sounds, names and attitudes

Juliette Binoche Chinese Laozi Mao Zedong Turkish Mustafa Kemal Erkin Koray German Friedrich Nietzsche Clara Schumann Spanish Isabel Allende Che Guevara

juLIET.binOC. laudz.

maudzyDYN. (Final ng is in Lojban conventionally turned into n.) MUStafas.keMAL. .erkin.korais. fridrix.nitcys. klaras.cuman. .izaBEL.aiendes. tcegevaras.

Exercise 3
Where are these places? 1. nu,IORK. 2. romas. 3. xavanas. 4. kardif. 5. beidjin. 6. .ANkaras. 7. .ALbekerkis. 8. vankuver. 9. keiptaun. 10. taibeis. 11. bon. 12. delis. 13. nis. 14. .atinas. 15. lidz. 16. xelsinkis.

Exercise 4
Lojbanise the following names 1. John 2. Melissa

Chapter 1. Sounds, names and attitudes 3. Amanda 4. Matthew 5. Michael 6. David Bowie 7. Jane Austen 8. William Shakespeare 9. Sigourney Weaver 10. Richard Nixon 11. Istanbul 12. Madrid 13. Tokyo 14. San Salvador

Lojban words as names

By now you should be able to Lojbanise your own name. However, if you prefer, you can translate your name into Lojban (if you know what it means, of course) or adopt a completely new Lojban identity. Native Americans generally translate their name when speaking English, partly because they have meaningful names, and partly because they dont expect the wasichu to be able to pronounce words in Lakota, Cherokee or whatever! All Lojban words (as opposed to cmene) end in a vowel, and although you can use them as names as they stand, its common to leave out the final vowel to make it absolutely clear that this is a name and not something else (Lojban goes for overkill when it comes to possible misunderstanding). So if your name or nickname is Cat (Lojban mlatu), you can either add s like a normal cmene to make mlatus., or just chop the end off and call yourself mlat. . Here are a few examples:

Fish finpe finp.

Bjrn (Scandinavian = bear) cribe crib. Green crino crin. Mei Li (Chinese = beautiful) melbi melb.

Ayhan (Turkish = Moon Lord) lunra nobli (= lurnobli) lurnoblis.

Answers to Exercises Exercise 2

1. .ua 2. .oi 3. .uinai 4. .ui

Chapter 1. Sounds, names and attitudes 5. .ienai 6. .oi , .ienai, or even .oi.ienai 7. .iunai 8. Probably .aunai.oi, unless you like cold greasy food, of course. 9. .uu 10. Depends on your feelings about beetles. .ii if you have a phobia, .aunai if you are merely repelled by it, .au if youre an entomologist, and so on.

Exercise 3
1. New York: USA 2. Rome: Italy 3. Havana: Cuba 4. Cardiff: Wales (The Welsh for Cardiff is Caerdydd, which would Lojbanise to something like kairdyd..) 5. Beijing: China 6. Ankara: Turkey 7. Albequerque: New Mexico, USA 8. Vancouver: Canada 9. Cape Town: South Africa 10. Taipei: Taiwan (note b, not p. Although actually, the b in Pinyin is pronounced as a p... But this isnt meant to be a course on Mandarin!) 11. Bonn: Germany 12. Delhi: India (The Hindi for Delhi is Dill, which would give diliys. or diliis..) 13. Nice: France 14. Athens: Greece (Athina in Greek) 15. Leeds: England 16. Helsinki: Finland

Exercise 4
There are usually alternative spellings for names, either because people pronounce the originals differently, or because the exact sound doesnt exist in Lojban, so you need to choose between two Lojban letters. This doesnt matter, so long as everyone knows who or where youre talking about. 1. djon. (or djan. with some accents) 2. melisys. 3. .amandys. (again, depending on your accent, the final y may be a, the initial a may be y, and the middle a may be e.) 4. matius. 5. maikyl. or maik,l. , depending on how you say it. 6. deivyd.bau,is. or bo,is. (but not bu,is.thats the knife) 7. djein.ostin.

Chapter 1. Sounds, names and attitudes 8. .uiliam.cekspir. 9. sigornis.uivyr. or sygornis.uivyr. 10. ritcyrd.niksyn. 11. .istanBUL. with English stress, .IStanbul with American, .istanbul. with Turkish. Lojbanists generally prefer to base cmene on local pronunciation, but this is not an absolute rule. 12. maDRID. 13. tokios. 14. san.salvaDOR. (with Spanish stress)

Names and relationships

Chapter 2. Relationships and Places

In Lesson 1 we looked at cmene, Lojban names. cmene are typically understood to label one particular thing. Just as in English, if I say Mary, I mean one particular person called Mary at a time, no matter how many people there are in the world called Mary; so in Lojban, meris. can only refer to one person. This means that cmene normally do not stand for classes of things (like person, dog or computer) or for relationships between things (like loves, gives or is inside).
Note: Those of you already advanced in Lojban wisdom will point out that mass names dont name one particular thing. True; but if you know that much Lojban, you also know what the real distinction between a predicate and a name is anyway, so you know where this simplification is coming from. The rest of you, er, carry on.

Relationships are the key to Lojban, and words describing a relationship are said to act as selbri. A selbri is not a type of word (like a verb in English); it is something that some types of words can do. Various types of word can act as selbri, but cmene, as weve seen, cannot.

The main type of word used as a selbri is a gismu, or root-word. These are the building blocks of Lojban vocabulary. gismu are easy to recognise, because they always have five letters, in the form CVCCVe.g. gismu, dunda, sumti or CCVCVe.g. cmene, bridi, klama (C=consonant; V=vowel).

Exercise 1
Which of the following Lojban words are: a. gismu b. cmene (remember, they always end in a consonant) c. neither? Note: Ive left out the full stops in the cmenethat would make it too easy! 1. lojban 2. dunda 3. praxas 4. mi 5. cukta 6. prenu 7. blanu

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Chapter 2. Relationships and Places 8. kae 9. dublin 10. selbri

Take your places...

Now we can recognise a gismu, lets see what we can make it do. dunda means give, and as a selbri it describes a relationship between a giver, something they give, and someone who receives itin that order. (Lojban insists on the order so you can tell which is which; but thats a convention of dunda, rather than something intrinsic in the act of giving.) Lets say we have three people, Maria, Claudia and Julia, for instance. If we say
la mari,as. dunda la .iulias. la klaudias.

we mean that Maria gives Julia to Claudia.

Note: The la you see in front of each cmene is an article, like a and the in English. Its job is to signal to the listener that the word coming up is a name, and not some other kind of word.

If, on the other hand, we say

la .iulias. dunda la mari,as. la klaudias.

we mean that Maria is who is being given away, and Julia is the one who gives her to Claudia. How do we know this? English uses the word to to indicate the receiver, and in some other languages (like Latin or Turkish) the form of the words themselves change. In Lojban, as in logic, we have what is called place structure. Place-structure means that dunda doesnt just mean give, it means x1 gives x2 to x3 where x means someone or something. Even if we just say dunda on its own, we still mean that someone gives something to someone; we just arent interested in (or we already know) who or what.

We can say, then, that dunda has three places. We can think of places as slots which we can, if we want, fill with people, objects, events or whatever. These places are called sumti in Lojban (easy to remember, as it sounds a bit like someone saying something and chewing off the end of the word). Again, a sumti is not a type of word, it is something a word does. The simplest Lojban sentence is a bridi, i.e. a selbri and a bunch of sumti. In other words,
bridi = selbri + sumti Note for logicians and computer programmers: For selbri, logicians can read predicate or relation, and programmers can read function; for sumti, both can read argument.

How many sumti can a selbri describe? The number depends on the place structure of the word we use for the selbri. (There are ways of tagging on extra sumti, which well cover in later lessons). A gismu has a set number of places; as weve just seen, dunda has three. The number of places varies from one to a staggering (and rare) five. Here are some examples.

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Chapter 2. Relationships and Places

ninmu

One place

x1 is a woman (any female humanoid person, not necessarily adult)

Note: To assume that Lojban works like English in general is a sin Lojbanists are ever on the alert for. It is enough of a community obsession that the Lojban word for itmalglico damned Englishroutinely turns up in the English of Lojbanists, even when theyre not talking about Lojban. In this instance, it is malglico to asume that ninmu refers to an adult.

blabi

cmila

x1 is white / very light-coloured

x1 laughs [not necessarily at someone or something; to include the object of the laughter you would use the lujvo (compound word) miafrax1 laughs at x2, a slightly different concept]

cipni vofli

Two places

x1 is a bird/avian/fowl of species x2

jungo junri

x1 flies [in air/atmosphere] using lifting/propulsion means x2 aspect x2

x1 reflects Chinese [Mandarin, Cantonese, Wu, etc.] culture/nationality/language in x1 (person) is serious/earnest/has gravity about x2 (event/state/activity) x1 is good/beneficial/acceptable for x2 by standard x3

Three places
xamgu

[This is very Lojbanicthe English word good on its own is so vague as to be almost meaningless. It is also slightly malglico to put a person in the x1 place, which is normally filled by an object, state or event. For morally good you would usually use vrude virtuous] x1 is to the right of x2, where x2 is facing x3

pritu cliva

kabri

[Remember all those times you have to ask Is that my right or your right? in English] x1 leaves x2 via route x3 x1 is a cup/glass/tumbler/mug/vessel/[bowl] containing contents x2, and of material x3

Four places
vecnu tivni

x1 [seller] sells/vends x2 [goods/service/commodity] to buyer x3 for amount/cost/expense x4 x1 [broadcaster] televises programming x2 via media/channel x3 to television receiver x4 x1 runs on surface x2 using limbs x3 with gait x4 x1 goes/comes to x2 from x3 via x4 by means x5 medium x5

bajra

Five places
klama cukta fanva

x1 is a book about subject/theme/story x2 by author x3 for audience x4 preserved in x1 translates x2 to language x3 from language x4 with translation-result x5

So for example you can say (trying desperately to match the grammar to what youve been taught so far):

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Chapter 2. Relationships and Places

la mari,as. ninmu

la tuitis. cipni la serinus.serinus.kanarias. la .iulias. pritu la mari,as. la klaudias.

Maria is a woman.

Tweety is a bird of species Serinus serinus canaria. Julia is to the right of Maria, facing Claudia.

la pybysys. tivni la niksyn.in.tcainas. la kycy,ebutys. la telis.

la .iulias. klama la .uacintyn. la losandjeles. la cikagos. la .amtrak.

PBS (the American Public Broadcasting Service) televises Nixon in China (an opera) through KCET (the Los Angeles PBS affiliate) to Telly (a pet name for a particular television) (!). Julia travels to Washington from Los Angeles via Chicago on Amtrak (the American inter-city train network.)

Determining place structure

If all these places sound a bit daunting, dont worryyou dont have to memorise all of them (in fact nobody does). There are a few cases where its worth learning the place structure to avoid misunderstanding, but usually you can guess place structures using context and a few rules of thumb. 1. The first place is often the person or thing who does something or is something (in Lojban there is no grammatical difference between doing and being). 2. If someone or something has something done to them, he/she/it is usually in the second place. 3. to places (destinations) nearly always come before from places (origins).

4. Less-used places come towards the end. These tend to be things like by standard, by means or made of.

The general idea is that the places which are most likely to be filled come first. You dont have to use all the available places, and any unfilled places at the end are simply missed out.

Try to guess the place structure of the following gismu. You probably wont get them all, but you should be able to guess the most important ones. Think of what needs to be in the sentence for it to make sense, then add anything you think would be useful. For example, with klama, you need to know whos coming and going, and although you could in theory say Julie goes, it would be pretty meaningless if you didnt add where she goes to. Where she starts her journey, the route she takes and what transport she uses are progressively less important, so they occupy the third, fourth and fifth places. 1. karce car 2. nelci like, is fond of 3. cmene name 4. sutra fast, quick 5. crino green 6. sisti stop, cease

Exercise 2

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Chapter 2. Relationships and Places 7. prenu person 8. cmima member, belongs to 9. barda big 10. cusku say, express 11. tavla talk, chat Note: What the place structure for gismu should be is often enough an involved philosophical issue. Place structures were debated exhaustively in the early 90s, and the current place structures (finalised in 1994) are not really open for negotiation any more.

gismu as sumti

So far weve seen how a gismu can express a relationship between two or more cmene, so we can say things like
la bil. nelci la meilis.

Bill likes Mei Li

But cmene can only go so far (as the examples above must have proven!) Most things and people in world wont have namesor at least, not any names we are aware of. So if we dont happen to know Mei Lis name, how can we say Bill likes the woman? If we say la bil. nelci la ninmu, we mean that Bill likes someone whose name is Woman, which is not what we want. What we say, in fact, is
la bil. nelci le ninmu

What does le mean here? We have translated it into English as the, and like the and la, it is an article; but the isnt quite what it means. The best way to think of it is the thing(s) I call. la + cmene is like a permanent label (Bill is always Bill). le + gismu is more like a temporary labelI have something in mind, and choose to call it woman. Probably she really is a woman, but with le this doesnt have to be sowe could be talking about a transvestite or a stone that looks a bit like a woman. There are other articles which can show that its a real woman, or a typical woman or whatever, but well leave those alone for the time being. One more word is sometimes necessary when using gismu as sumtinamely, cu. This doesnt carry any meaning, but separates the selbri from whatever comes before it. Its not necessary with cmene, because they cant run over into anything else. For the same reason, you dont need cu after mi (I/me/we), do (you, the person(s) Im talking to) or any words like this (pro-sumti, in Lojban jargon). But le ninmu klama does not mean The woman goes. Two gismu next to each other form a compound selbri (or tanru), which means that ninmu and klama do get run together. The result is that that le ninmu klama means The woman-type-of goer (maybe a female traveller). What we say instead, to avoid this, is
le ninmu cu klama

cu does not mean is (as in The woman is going). In fact it doesnt mean anythingits just there to indicate that theres a selbri coming up.

Warning

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Chapter 2. Relationships and Places

Add cu to the following Lojban sentences where necessary, then work out what they mean. For example, for le klama ninmu to make sense as a sentence, you need to add cu: le klama cu ninmu. 1. la klaudias. dunda le cukta la bil. 2. le karce sutra 3. la kamIL. cukta 4. mi fanva la kaMIL. la lojban 5. le prenu sisti 6. le ninmu cliva 7. la .istanbul. barda 8. mi tavla la mari,as. 9. la meiris. pritu la meilis. mi 10. le cipni vofli 11. crino 12. ninmu

Exercise 3

Changing Places

Weve seen that if we dont need all the places (and we rarely do), then we can miss out the unnecessary ones at the end of the bridi. We can also miss out the first place if it is obvious (just as in Spanish). However, it sometimes happens that we want places at the end, but not all the ones in the middle. There are a number of ways to get round this problem.

One way is to fill the unnecessary places with zoe, which means something not important. So la suzyn. klama la paris. la berlin. zoe le karce tells us that Susan goes to Paris from Berlin by car, but were not interested in the route she takes. In fact zoe is always implied, even if we dont say it. If someone says klama, what they actually mean is
zoe klama zoe zoe zoe zoe

but it would be pretty silly to say all that.

Note: A bridi containing only a selbri, and no sumti, has a special kind of role in Lojban. Such bridi are called observatives, and their job is to make a simple observation that something is there or is going on, without going into the details of who or what is involved. So fagri means just Fire!, not My house is on fire or The salmon was poached over a gently lapping campfire. Similarly, karce means Car!, and not This is a natural gas powered 2001 sedan Hyundai car, featuring fuzzy dice and a Free Brobdignag! bumper sticker. Observatives are as simple as baby talkwhich is no surprise, since thats what they were modelled on. Note that observatives are still normal Lojban selbri; in particular, they dont make any distinction between verb and noun. So klama means not Go! (well find out how to say that next lesson), but Goes! or Goer!more idiomatically, Look! Someones going! And there is no real difference between klama Look! Someones going! and karce Look! A car!

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Chapter 2. Relationships and Places

Most people dont want more than one zoe in a sentence (though theres nothing to stop you using as many as you like). A more popular way to play around with places is to use the place tags fa, fe, fi, fo and fu. These mark a sumti as being associated with a certain place of the selbri, no matter where it comes in the sentence: fa introduces what would normally be the first place, fe the second place, and so on. For example, in
la suzyn. klama fu le karce

Susan goes in the car / Susan goes by car

fu marks le karce as the fifth place of klama (the means of transport). Without fu, the sentence would

mean Susan goes to the car.

After a place introduced with a place tag, any trailing places follow it in numbering. So in
la suzyn. klama fo la .uacintyn. le karce

Susan goes via Washington by car placei.e. the fifth place.

la .uacintyn. is the fourth place of klama, and le karce is understood as the place following the fourth

With place tags you can also swap places around. For example,
fe le cukta cu dunda fi la klaudias.

The book was given to Claudia.

(The bookle cuktais the second place of dunda, what is given; Claudiala klaudias.is the third place of dunda, the recipient.) Again, you probably dont want to overdo place tags, or youll end up counting on your fingers (although theyre very popular in Lojban poetryplace tags, that is, not fingers.)

A final way to change places is conversion, which actually swaps the places round in the selbribut well leave that for another lesson. There are no rules for which method you use, and you can use them in any way you want, so long as the person youre talking to understands.

Vocabulary
glico rupnu rokci

x1 is English/pertains to English-speaking culture in aspect x2 x1 is a quantity of/is made of/contains rock/stone of type/composition x2 from location x3 x1 is measured in major-money-units (dollar/yuan/ruble) as x2 (quantity), monetary system x3

zoe la .iulias.

Reorder the sumti with place tags in these Lojban sentences so that no place tags are necessary, and the sumti appear in their expected places. Insert zoe where necessary. For example: fi la .iulias. cu pritu fa le karce le karce cu pritu 1. fo le cukta cu cusku fe le glico fi le prenu 2. fi mi vecnu fa do le karce 3. fu la .Odisis. cu fanva fi le glico fa la fits.djerald. 4. mi vecnu fo le rupnu

Exercise 4

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Chapter 2. Relationships and Places 5. fi le rokci cu kabri 6. fi la lojban. fo la lojban. tavla fa do

Summary

In this lesson weve covered the following points: The basic bridi structure. The difference between cmene and gismu, and the articles la and le. The place structure of gismu. to separate selbri from sumti.

cu

zoe

Changing places with place-tags.

to fill missing sumti places.

Although there is a lot more to Lojban sentences than this, you now have the basics of Lojban grammar; the rest is just a matter of adding things on to itdifferent articles, tags, times, numbers and so on.

Answers to exercises Exercise 1

1.
lojban cmene

2.
dunda gismu (give)

3.
praxas. cmene (PraguePraha in Czechthe capital of the Czech Republic)

4.
mi

Neither: its a type of cmavo (structure word) called a pro-sumti, a word that stands in for a sumti, like an English pronoun stands in for a noun

5.
cukta gismu (book)

6.
prenu gismu (person)

7.
blanu gismu (blue)

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Chapter 2. Relationships and Places 8.

kae

Neither, its a cmavo or structure word, meaning can

9.
dublin. cmene (the capital of Ireland)

10.
selbri

Neither, its a lujvo or compound word

Exercise 2
1.
karce

x1 is a car/automobile/truck/van [a wheeled motor vehicle] for carrying x2, propelled by x3

(A car propelled by natural gas is a different kind of thing to a diesel truck.) 2.

nelci

x1 is fond of/likes/has a taste for x2 (object/state)

3.
cmene

x1 (quoted word(s)) is a/the name/title/tag of x2 to/used-by namer/name-user x3 (person)

(Different people have different names for things.) 4.

sutra

x1 is fast/swift/quick/hastes/rapid at doing/being/bringing about x2 (event/state)

5.
crino

x1 is green

6.
sisti

x1 ceases/stops/halts activity/process/state x2 [not necessarily completing it]

7.
prenu

x1 is a person/people (noun) [not necessarily human]

8.
cmima

x1 is a member/element of set x2; x1 belongs to group x2; x1 is amid/among/amongst group x2

9.
barda

x1 is big/large in property/dimension(s) x2 as compared with standard/norm x3

(Is the Taj Mahal big? Yes, compared to me; no, compared to Jupiter.) 10.
cusku

x1 expresses/says x2 for audience x3 via expressive medium x4

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Chapter 2. Relationships and Places 11.

tavla

x1 talks/speaks to x2 about subject x3 in language x4

Note the different place structures of cusku and tavla. With cusku the emphasis is on communication; what is communicated is more important than who it is communicated to. Quotes in e-mails frequently start with do cusku die (die means the following) as the Lojban equivalent of You wrote. (ciska write places more emphasis on the physical act of writing.) With tavla the emphasis is rather more on the social act of talking: you can tavla about nothing in particular.

Exercise 3
1. la klaudias. dunda le cukta la bil. Claudia gives the book(s) to Bill. 2. le karce cu sutra The car(s) is/are fast. 3. la kamIL. cukta Camille is a book. 4. mi fanva la kaMIL. la lojban I translate Camille into Lojban. 5. le prenu cu sisti The person(s) stop(s) (whatever it was they were doing) 6. le ninmu cu cliva The woman/women leave(s) 7. la .istanbul. barda Istanbul is big. (An understatementit has a population of over ten million) 8. mi tavla la mari,as. I talk to Maria. 9. la meiris. pritu la meilis. mi Mary is on the right of Mei Li, if youre facing me. 10. le cipni cu vofli The bird(s) flies/fly 11. crino Its / theyre green. 12. ninmu Shes a woman / Theyre women / Theres a woman / There are some women In sentences 1, 3, 4, 7, 8 and 9, cu is possible but not necessary. In the last two sentences, cu is impossible, since it has to separate the selbri from the sumti that comes before it, and there are no sumti here to separate. Those last two sentences are observatives, as discussed in Changing Places. Note that I have translated these sentences in the present tense (since in English you have to choose a tense) but they could be in any tense; so le cipni cu vofli could also mean The bird flew, for example. Well look at how Lojban expresses tense in later lessons; just remember that you dont actually need itnormally its obvious whether an action takes place in the past, present or future.

Exercise 4
1. zoe cusku le glico le prenu le cukta Someone expresses the English thing for the person(s) through a book The book is a medium for English to people 2. do vecnu le karce mi zoe You sell me the car for some amount

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Chapter 2. Relationships and Places I am sold the car by you (Notice how le karce is assigned x2, since it follows an x1 place immediately.) 3. la fits.djerald. fanva zoe le glico zoe la .Odisis Fitzgerald translates something into English from some language as The Odyssey The Odyssey is a translation into English by Fitzgerald 4. mi vecnu zoe zoe le rupnu I sell something to someone for the dollar I sell (it) for a dollar 5. zoe kabri zoe le rokci Something is a cup, containing something, made of stone Stone is something cups are made of 6. do tavla zoe la lojban. la lojban. You talk to someone about Lojban in Lojban You talk about Lojban in Lojban Note: As you can see, you can have more than one sumti in front of the selbri. This is unlike English, where you usually have only the subject before the verb. This can happen with or without place tags; for instance, do zoe la lojban. tavla la lojban. means the same thing as do tavla zoe la lojban. la lojban.

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Chapter 3. Commands, Questions, and Possessives

Commands
So far weve looked at simple propositions, sentences that say that something is true. You can, in theory, say anything you want with propositions, but its pretty inconvenient. For example, if I want you to run, I could say just that: I want you to run but Id probably just say: Run! How do we do this in Lojban? We cant copy English grammar and just say bajra, since, as weve seen, this means Look! Someone/something runs. Instead we say
ko bajra ko means you, the person Im talking to, but only in commands. (In normal sentences its do).

Normally it comes in the first place of the bridi, since normally youre asking people to do something or be something, not to have something done to them. However, you can put it elsewhere, e.g.
nelci ko

This means something like Act so that [someone unspecified] likes you, and sounds pretty odd in English, but you could use it in the sense of Try to make a good impression. Another example is:
mi dunda le cifnu ko

or Act so that I give the baby to you, with the possible meaning Get up and put your cigarette out Im going to pass you the baby. You can even have ko in two places in a bridi, for example,
ko kurji ko

[Act so that] you take care of you

or in other words, Take care of yourself. In fact, as alluded to in the last exercise of the previous lesson, we can put the selbri anywhere other than the beginning of the sentence. (We cant just put the selbri at the very beginning of the sentence, without fa before the x1 sumti, because this would imply someone/something for the first place: the selbri would become an observative.) Because of this freedom with sumti position, we can (and do) say

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Chapter 3. Commands, Questions, Possessives ko ko kurji

Vocabulary
catra ciska finti

nelci

nenri

prami sutra

x1 (agent) kills/slaughters/murders x2 by action/method x3 x1 inscribes/writes x2 on display/storage medium x3 with writing implement x4; x1 is a scribe x1 invents/creates/composes/authors x2 for function/purpose x3 from existing elements/ideas x4 x1 is fond of/likes/has a taste for x2 (object/state) x1 is in/inside/within x2; x1 is on the inside/interior of x2 [totally within the bounds of x2] x1 loves/feels strong affectionate devotion towards x2 (object/state) x1 is fast/swift/quick/hastes/rapid at doing/being/bringing about x2 (event/state)

Exercise 1
Imagine that someone says these things to you. What is it that they want you to do? 1. ko klama mi 2. ko dunda le cukta mi 3. la .izaBEL. nelci ko 4. ko sutra 5. ko ko nelci

Softening the blow...

So far weve looked at simple commands. However, outside the army, we dont normally use these very muchnormally we ask people politely. Foreigners in England often make the mistake of thinking that putting please in front of a command makes it into a polite request, which it doesnt (in English we usually have to make it into a question e.g. Could you open the window?) Fortunately, in Lojban, please really is the magic word. Putting the word .eo before a sentence with ko changes it into a request; e.g.
.eo ko dunda le cukta mi

is literally Please give me the book, but is actually more like Could you give me the book, please? (Of course, norms of politeness in English do not necessarily translate into other languages, so it is better in such cases to be safe than sorry.)

Questions

In English, we make a yes/no question by changing the order of the words (e.g. You are ... Are you ...) or putting some form of do at the beginning (e.g. Does she smoke?). This seems perfectly natural to someone whose native language is English (or German), but is actually unnecessarily complicated (as any speaker of Chinese or Turkish will tell you). In Lojban we can turn any proposition into a yes/no question by simply putting xu somewhere in the sentence (usually at the beginning.) Some examples:
xu do nelci la bil.

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Chapter 3. Commands, Questions, Possessives

Do you like Bill?

xu mi klama xu crino

Am I coming? Is it green?

There are two ways to answer these questions. Lojban, like some other languages, does not have words that mean yes or no. One way to answer yes is to repeat the selbri e.g.
xu do nelci la bil. nelci

We can also use goi, which repeats the last bridi (without the question)
Note: However, if you say You like Bill, and I then say You like Bill, I am repeating your words, but not your meaning. To do that, I would need to say I like Bill instead. It is much more useful for goi to repeat the meaning than the words of the bridi; so goi after xu do nelci la bil. means not do nelci la bil., but mi nelci la bil.. In other words, in an answer to a Do you? type of yes/no question, goi means Yes (I do), as youd expect.

What about negative answers? Any bridi can be made negative by using na. This negates the whole of the bridi, so you can put it anywhere you want, with a little extra grammar. But the simplest place to put it grammatically is right before the selbri. So mi cu na nelci la bil. means It is not true that I like Bill, or in other words, I dont like Bill.
Tip: By default, na is followed by a selbri. Since cu has the job of indicating that a selbri is coming up, na makes it superfluous. So you can simply say mi na nelci la bil.

As an answer to a question, we do the same thing, so we just say na nelci or na goi.

Logical note: Negatives are a lot more complicated than they look, in both English and Lojban. Strictly speaking, mi na nelci la bil. is true even if Ive never heard of Bill (since its pretty hard to like someone you know nothing about.) Well look at some other negatives later, but for the time being na will do fine. Just as in English, if you ask someone if they like Bill, and they reply No because they havent met him, theyre being amazingly unhelpfulbut not really lying.

English also has a number of wh- questionswho, what etc. In Lojban we use one word for all of these: ma. This is like an instruction to fill in the missing place. For example:
do klama ma la london.

Where are you going? London.

ma klama la london. la klaudias.

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Chapter 3. Commands, Questions, Possessives

Whos going to London? Claudia.

mi dunda ma do le cukta

I give what to you? (probably meaning What was it I was supposed to be giving you?) The book.

Finally we have mo. This is like ma, but questions a selbri, not a sumtiits like English What does x do? or What is x? (remember, being and doing are the same in Lojban!) More logically, we can see mo as asking someone to describe the relationship between the sumti in the question. For example: You ??? Claudia What are you to Claudia? The answer depends on the context. Possible answers to this question are:
nelci: pendo: prami: xebni: cinba: fengu:

do mo la klaudias.

I like her.

I hate her.

I adore/am in love with her.

I am her friend

I kissed her

Im angry with her.

Note that the time is not important here: just as cinba can mean kiss, kissed, will kiss and so on, mo does not ask a question about any particular time. There are ways to specify time in Lojban, but its not necessary to use them. (Just to satisfy your curiosity though, I kissed Claudia is mi pu cinba la klaudias.)

Weve said that mo can also be a What is ... type of question. The simplest example is ti moWhat is this? You could also ask la meilis. mo, which could mean Who is Mei Li?, What is Mei Li?, What is Mei Li doing? and so on. Again, the answer depends on the context. For example:
ninmu: jungo: pulji: sanga:

Shes a policewoman.

Shes Chinese.

Shes a woman.

melbi:

Shes a singer or Shes singing.

Shes beautiful. (possibly a pun, since this is what meili means in Chinese!)

There are ways to be more specific, but these normally involve a ma question; for example la meilis. gasnu ma (Mei Li does what?).

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Chapter 3. Commands, Questions, Possessives

There are more question words in Lojban, but xu, ma and mo are enough for most of what you might want to ask. Three other important questions, xo (How many?) ca ma (When?) and pei (How do you feel about it?) will come in the lessons on numbers, time and attitudes.

Exercise 2: Lojban general knowledge quiz

Answer the following questions (in Lojban, of course). Most of the answers are very easy; the trick is to understand the question! For example, cynyny. mo What is CNN?tivni Broadcaster 1. la brutus. mo la .iulius. 2. ma prami la djuliet. 3. xu la paris. nenri la .iunaited.steits. 4. ma finti la .anas.kaREninas. 5. xu la porc. sutra 6. la lis.xarvis.azuald. catra ma 7. xu la djorj.eliot. ninmu 8. la sakiamunis. mo 9. la cekspir. mo la xamlet. 10. la das.kapiTAL. cukta fi ma 11. xu la xardis. fengu la lorel.

Possessives

The sumti we have seen so farnames, and le + gismu combinationsdo an OK job in describing things. They dont do as good a job in narrowing things down. For example, you may be fortunate enough to know two people who own Porsches. Your friends will (normally) have different names, which you can use to tell them apart. But if youre discussing their cars, how do you tell them apart? Or take the following sentence:
mi nelci le tamne

I like the cousin

Not as informative a sentence as it might be: the question that you should be hollering at this instant is, Whose cousin? Is it my cousin? Your cousin? Frederick IIs cousin? When we talk about things and people, we are expected to give enough information, so that the listener knows who or what on Earth we are talking about. In these examples, saying the Porsche or the cousin is clearly not enough information. One of the simplest way to narrow things down is by answering the question whose? It doesnt work in all cases, but it will here: Marys Porsche, Freds Porsche, Tims cousin, my cousin. So, how do we say that in Lojban? Well, theres two ways. Or four. Or seven. Or thirteen. Or morebecause this is Lojban, and in Lojban you can be as precise, or as imprecise, as you want to. Well give you the simple answer first, and then work our way up. The simplest way of all is to add, after the sumti youre talking about, pe followed by the person (or thing) you associate it with. So:

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Chapter 3. Commands, Questions, Possessives

la porc. pe la meiris. le tamne pe la tim. le nenri pe le karce

Marys Porsche Tims cousin

le cmima pe la lojbangirz.

The inside of the car

The member of the Logical Language Group

Easy as pie, so far.

Youll notice that the order is in some instances the other way around from English: la porc. pe la meiris. looks more like the Porsche of Mary. Now, English uses both s and of for this kind of association. The choice between the two is complicated, but basically depends on whether the possessor is a person or notwhich is why the Porsche of Mary sounds odd, as does Englishs verbs.

Lojban doesnt have those restrictions: if you can do something with one sumti, you can do it with any sumti. And you can put Mary in front of her Porsche. One way to do it is to tuck the pe-phrase in between the article and the rest of your sumti: for instance, le pe la tim. tamne. This is literally The of Tim cousin. But this construction is kind of odd, and since its not how most languages do things, you wont be surprised that its not commonly used. There is a similar way of saying it, though, which is quite common. That is to wedge the possessor sumti between the article and the name or gismu, without the pe. This gives you le la tim. tamne, which should be instantly recognisable as Tims cousin. When the possessor is a single-word sumti, this is the most popular way of expressing things: le mi tamne is how you would normally say my cousin. So you can now say:
le la lojbangirz. cmima le la meiris. karce

The member of the Logical Language Group Marys car

le la toi,otas. nenri le do cukta

The inside of the Toyota Your book

Tip: You cant say la la meiris. porc.: strictly speaking, you cant tell when one name starts and another ends, since names can contain multiple pauses. If I said la la meiris. mersedez. benz., did I mean Marys Mercedez-Benz, or Mary Mercedezs Benz, or Mary Mercedez-Benzs something-else? For the same reason, you cant really say la pe la meiris. porc., either. For le + gismu as a possessor, things are even worse. The way Lojban grammar works, the sumti you insert between le and a brivla, to indicate a possessor, has to be kept fairly simple. For now, in fact, nest only names and single-word sumti inside le + gismu-type sumti; thats what everyone ends up doing anyway. To see why things can go wrong, consider how you would say le tamne pe le ninmu klama the woman travellers cousin with this kind of nesting. You could flip it around as le le ninmu klama tamnebut then, how can you tell where the possessor ends and where the possessee begins? That phrase could just as

26

Chapter 3. Commands, Questions, Possessives easily be the womans travelling cousin. A situation best avoided, in other words. There is a way you can make this work, thoughwhich well cover in a couple of lessons.

For each of the following, switch the two sumti around, so that you convert a pe possessive into a nested possessive, and vice versa. Only do this where grammatically allowed. For example, le la .iulias. kabri le kabri pe la .iulias.. 1. le cifnu pe la meiris. 2. le la meiris. cukta 3. le cukta pe mi 4. le cukta pe le ninmu 5. ma pe mi 6. le zoe karce 7. le la tim. rokci 8. la meiris. pe la tim. 9. le cukta pe ma 10. le cmene pe la roz.

Exercise 3

More Possessives Warning

This is somewhat advanced, and you might want to skip it on a first reading.

What pe is actually doing is saying that there is a relationship between the two sumti. What that relationship is is left as open as possible: weve used the term possessor, but the relationship need not involve ownership in Lojban any more than in English. (That also holds when you leave the pe out.) For instance, if I say Dannys desk (le gunjubme pe la danis. or le la danis. gunjubme) at an office, I probably dont mean that Danny owns the desk (in all likelihood the company does), but simply that he sits there all the time and keeps his stuff there.

You can get more specific if you wantthough Lojbanists tend not to. If you want to say there is actual ownership involved, or any other association in which someone is uniquely associated with what youre talking about, you can use po instead of pe. le gunjubme po la danis., for instance, means that this is the desk Danny is uniquely associated with. This can be because he actually paid money for at a store. In that case, like anything he owns, he can sell it, or give it away, in which case it stops being his. Or it may be the desk assigned to him, and him alone, at work; but if the desk (or Danny) is reassigned, the desk stops being his. Moreover, if there is a crisis in office space, and Danny is sharing the desk with Wilfred, then you cant speak of the desk as being either le gunjubme po la danis. or le gunjubme po la .uilfred., because its unique to the pair of them, not to any one of them. You can still, however, speak of it as le gunjubme pe la danis., which does not insist on uniqueness.
Tip: There is a way to say the desk is unique to the pair of Danny and Wilfred: le gunjubme po la danis. joi la .uilfred. Youll be meeting joi here and there in the coming lessons, but youll be formally introduced to it in Lesson 11.

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Chapter 3. Commands, Questions, Possessives

Some other examples:

le cukta po mi le cipni po la meilis. la kokakolys. po do

My book

Mei Lis bird

Your Coca-Cola

There are some things which you have which are unique to you, but which also never stop being yours, by definition. Your hand, for example, remains your hand, even if you saw it off (apologies for gruesomeness): youd have to enter the high-stakes world of international organ transplants before you could say that your hand becomes someone elses hand. Your parents also are not something you can give away or transfer (much though you might be tempted to on occasion!) Whatever happens, they remain, by definition, your parents. Many languages distinguish between this kind of having, and the here-today-gone-tomorrow kind of having. Lojban is one such language, and for your parents or your arm, you would say poe instead of po:
le rirni poe la .iulias. le birka poe la klaudias.

Julias parents Claudias arm

Note: As it happens, English is not one of those languages that distinguishes between these two notions (alienable and inalienable possession are the jargon terms, in case youre ever browsing a grammar of a South Pacific language.) So the distinction hasnt been exploited much to date in Lojban. More generally, the much vaguer association signalled by pe is usually enough to narrow down what exactly you mean, anyway; and for now, most Lojbanists are content to leave it at that. You probably will too.

Oh, and one more thing. Weve been answering the question whose? through this section, but we havent said how you ask whose? Youve probably already guessed, though. The word whose? just means whos?, or of whom? And who? is ma. So if Tims cousin is le tamne pe la tim. or le la tim. tamne, then we just follow the same fill-in-the-slot approach as we did earlier on, with ma substituting for la tim.: whose cousin? is le tamne pe ma or le ma tamne. (You would have already found this out in the preceding exerciseif you were good, of course!)

For each of the following, specify whether they involve po, poe, or just pe. 1. My car 2. My language 3. My genes 4. My jeans 5. My fault 6. My self

Exercise 4 (Advanced)

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Chapter 3. Commands, Questions, Possessives 7. My present (that I got) 8. My present (that I gave)

Summary

In this chapter, we have seen how to give commands in Lojban; soften commands with attitudinals;

ask questions and give answers about sumti;

ask questions and give answers about selbri;

express association between two sumti, using pe and nesting;

express association between two sumti more precisely, as alienable or inalienable possession.

Answers to Exercises Exercise 1

1. Come to me. 2. Give me the book. 3. Act so that Isabel likes you. (or Butter up Isabel perhaps.) 4. Be fast (Hurry up!) 5. Like yourself. (Note that changing the word order doesnt change the meaning here.)

Exercise 2
1. catra (assuming its Julius Caesar were talking about.) 2. la romios. (assuming its that Juliet.) 3. na nenri or na goi, unless were talking about Paris, Texas. 4. la tolstois. 5. Trick question. la can name a specific Porsche, not Porsches in general, and a specific Porsche might go fast or not (e.g. it could have just broken down and not go at all.) In general, la porc. means just what I say it means, but as a name it is not used in general to refer to all Porsches, or to the typical Porsche. (Lojban has other ways of doing that.) 6. la KEnedis. 7. ninmu or goi (Despite the pen-name, George Eliot was a woman.) 8. Not much we can say with the vocabulary we have at the moment other than prenu (maybe emphasising that Sakyamunithe Buddhawas a person, not a God or somesuch). Other possible answers would be xindo Indian, or pavbudjo first Buddhist. 9. fintinot ciska! Lojban separates the business of putting pen to paper from the act of creating a work of art. If Shakespeare had dictated Hamlet to Francis Bacon, Bacon would have been the ciska (writer), but Shakespeare would have remained the finti (creator).

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Chapter 3. Commands, Questions, Possessives 10. la karl.marks. 11. fengu or goiwere talking about Laurel and Hardy here.

Exercise 3
1. le la meiris. cifnu (Marys child) 2. le cukta pe la meiris. (Marys book) 3. le mi cukta (My book) 4. You cant do this (for now): le le ninmu cukta is ambiguous. (The womans book) 5. You cant do this: there is no article in ma for mi to follow. The Lojban literally means my what?, but it can be used more flexibly. do nelci ma pe mi, for example, means What do you like about me? 6. le karce pe zoe ([Someones] car) 7. le rokci pe la tim. (Tims rock) 8. You cant do this: la la tim. meiris. would be confusing. (Tims Maryfor example, his sister, or his partner. Note that, as we discuss in the next section, this is not necessarily a demeaning thing to say: pe does not imply ownership, but only association.) 9. le ma cukta (Whose book?) 10. le la roz. cmene (Roses name; not The name of the rose, which would involve the gismu for rose, rozgu.)

Exercise 4
1. po: You own it, so its uniquely associated with you (by default.) 2. pe: You dont own it, and you can change it, so neither kinds of possession apply. 3. poe: Your genetic fingerprint makes your genes inseparably yours. 4. Though you might consider yourself inseparable from your jeans, too, they are of course po. 5. po: Theres no real sense of possession involved here; but this is still a unique association. 6. poe: If theres one thing thats inseparable from youits you. 7. po: I may not have paid any money for it, but a gift is my property nonetheless, so its uniquely associated with me. 8. po: Since Ive given the gift away, I do not own it in any real sense. But the gift is still uniquely associated with me, since it was me that gave it away.

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Chapter 4. Numbers, and a few more articles

One of the first things you learn in a new language is how to count, and this course is no exception. However, in Lojban, numbers include much more than just counting; for example, in Lojban, some, most and too many are numbers.

Basic numbers
1. pa

The numbers from one to nine are as follows: 2. re

7. ze 9. so 8. bi

6. xa

5. mu

4. vo

3. ci

This leaves zero, which is no (think yes, we have no bananas). You may have noticed that the numbers repeat the vowels AEIOU. Since you cant get by without memorising numbers, try to think of mnemonics for the unfamiliar ones. For example, although the sound is different, xa has the x of six, and I remembered so by thinking of the proverb A stitch in time saves nine, which is about sewing (.oi). Numbers from 10 onwards are made by putting the digits together, just like youd say a telephone number. For example:
pano zebi xanoci

vomusore

10 78 603 4,592

4,592 has a comma in it (or a full stop in some languages, just to make things confusing). We cant use a comma in Lojban, because that means separate these two syllables (as we saw in Lesson 1 with Lojbanised names like zo,is. for Zoe). What we say instead is kio. We dont have to use kio, but it can make things clearer. So 4,592 can also be read as vo kio musore. kio also has the advantage that if the following digits are all zeroes, we dont need to say them, so 3,000 is ci kio. You can remember kio easily if you think of kiloa thousand. (The similarity is not coincidental.)

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Chapter 4. Numbers and more articles

Just as we have a word for a comma, we also have one for a decimal point: pi. So 5.3 is mupici. In fact, pi is not always decimal; its the point for whatever number base youre using. But thats a more advanced topic.
Tip: Dont get this mixed up with the number pi (): 3.14159..., which has its own word in Lojban: paioddly enough.

When you want to talk about numbers as sumtithat is to say, as things in and of themselvesyou need to put an article in front of them. But that article cannot be la, and for reasons which hopefully will become clear soon, it cannot be le either. In front of numbers, Lojban uses the article li. So li pareci means the number one hundred and twenty three. One, two, three, on the other hand, would be li pa li re li ci: each li introduces a brand new number.

What are the following numbers in Lojban? (dont forget li!) 1. 35 3. 6,000 2. 4,802

Exercise 1

5. 6,891,573.905

4. 7.54

Numbers and articles

So far, weve looked at three articles: la, for cmene, le, for sumti, and li for numbers. So li bi is the number eight. Actually, outside mathematics, li is not used very much. What we usually want to say is things like three people, or the two women.
Note for mathematicians: Lojban has a number of words to deal with basic mathematics, and also an incredible number of words to deal with just about any mathematical expression you can think of, in a separate subset of the language (The Complete Lojban Language, Chapter 18.) But you cant expect everything in a beginners course.

We can use numbers either before or after le. For example,

ci le gerku

means three of the dogs, while

le ci gerku

means the three dogs.

What do we do, though, if we just want to say three dogs? For this we need another article, lo. The logic of lo is pretty complicated, but it basically means something which really is, which nine times out of ten is the same as English a or some. (Translating Lojban grammar into English like this is a mortal sindamned under the name of malglico; but even so, this is the best thing to do with lo at this stage!)

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Chapter 4. Numbers and more articles Note for logicians: lo prenu cu klama expresses the proposition There exists at least one person, such that that person goes.

By contrast, the cannot mean the same thing as lo. In English, the dog doesnt mean just something which really is a dog, but more like something which really is a dog, and which I already have in mind. (Thats how A dog came in. A dog was black and A dog came in. The dog was black are different.) Lojban sidesteps this problem by using le gerku something which Im going to call a dog. Its up to the audience to put together what the speaker had in mind when they called it le gerku, just as it is the audiences job in English to work out what dog the speaker had in mind.

So ci lo gerku means three of those which really are dogs, or in plain words, three dogs. lo ci gerku, however, means that we are talking about [one or more of] the only three dogs in the world, which is not something youd really want to say. (Mathematicians and logicians can look up the relevant parts of The Complete Lojban Language if they want clarification on this issueor for that matter on the differences between lo and le.)

Now consider the English sentence Three men carried a piano. This sentence has two potential meanings, as does any sentence involving a plural in English. You could be saying that the sentence holds true for each individual of the group. If the men involved are Andy, Barry, and Chris, you might be saying that Andy carried the piano, and Barry carried the piano, and Chris carried the piano. Alternatively, you could be saying that the sentence holds for the group as a unit: no one carried the piano individually, but all three men carried it together. Natural languages typically leave it up to context and plausibility to determine which of the two interpretations holds. But Lojban is a logical language, and so does not tolerate this confusion! le and lo force the individual interpretation. That is, if I say
ci lo nanmu cu bevri le pipno

I mean that each of the three men (nanmu) carried (bevri) the piano (pipno). And if I say
ci lo gerku cu batci mi

I just mean that three dogs bite me. Maybe one dog bit me in the morning, one in the afternoon, and one at night, or maybe I mean that I have been bitten by a dog three times in my life. There is nothing to say that the three dogs have anything to do with each other. But if you want those dogs, or those men, to be considered as a unit, youd say
luo ci lo nanmu cu bevri le pipno luo ci lo gerku cu batci mi luo means the mass composed of, and in effect converts a bunch of individuals into a coherent unit.

In the case of the dogs, for example, it makes them a pack. If youre a fan of computer strategy games, think of luo as like the group command for units (theres also an ungroup command, lua). Moreover, since the dogs act as a pack, it is not necessarily true that each of them individually bit you: it is actually enough that one of them bit you, for the pack to have bitten you. With le things are simpler. While le pano ninmu means the ten women, luo le pano ninmu means the ten women treated as a group or mass. Lets imagine that ten women I have in mind kiss me on ten separate occasions. (Hey, I do get to write these lessons for my own amusement, after all...) I could then say

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Chapter 4. Numbers and more articles le pano ninmu cu cinba mi

in which case Id consider myself quite fortunate. However, if I say luo le pano ninmu cu cinba mi, I mean that the ten women kiss me en masse, in which case I would consider myself either blessed or harrassed (maybe Im a rock star or something.) It does not necessarily mean that each and every woman kisses me; simply that I was mobbed by a group of ten women and kissed by one or (probably) more in the process.
luo le and luo lo are very useful concepts, even without explicit numbers, and there are shorter ways of saying each when no number comes between them: lei and loi respectively. So the three men carrying

the piano could be expressed as loi nanmu cu bevri le pipno, and the throng of women kissing me (!) as lei pano ninmu cu cinba mi.
For advanced students only: Once you have been involved with Lojban for a while, you will notice that you will see loi a lot, and luo lo hardly ever. In fact, by default the expression loi nanmu cu bevri le pipno, without a number, implies that all of mankind was somehow involved in carrying the piano. Strictly speaking, thats true (if three men carried the piano, then Man carried the piano.) But its not really the most specific way of expressing whats going on.

extension of a little-known mechanism documented in The Complete Lojban Language, pp. 132133), the way to do it is loi ci lo nanmu cu bevri le pipno: The mass of three out of [all] men carries the piano.

So how do you get the number three back into an expression like loi nanmu cu bevri le pipno? You cannot say loi ci nanmu cu bevri le pipno, because that means that there are only three men that exist in the universe. You cannot say ci loi nanmu cu bevri le pipno, because the three men act as one mass, and not as three masses. As it turns out (by

In the following English sentences, are the emphasised nouns individuals (prefixed in Lojban with le or lo) or masses (prefixed in Lojban with lei or loi)? 1. The students listened to the radio. 2. The students built a radio. 3. I bought sugar. 4. I bought radios.

Exercise 2

5. Elephants live to an old age. 6. Elephants have flat ears. 7. The students liked talking about elephants.

Proportions
This section gets into even more tricky logical stuff. Skip it if youre not interested.

Warning

If le ci prenu means the three people, and re le prenu means two of the people, how do you say two of the three people? You probably got this one pretty easily: re le ci prenu. If, however, we use lo, the meaning changes. We cant say re lo ci prenu to mean two out of any three people (i.e. two thirds of the population). This is

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Chapter 4. Numbers and more articles

because while le ci prenu means the three people that I have in mind, lo ci prenu, by the same logic, means the three people that actually existi.e. that there are only three people in the universe. (Thats also why, as the astute reader may have noted, you cant say loi ci nanmu cu bevri le pipno.) You would therefore only use the number+lo+number formula if you knew the actual numbers rather than just the proportions, e.g.
re lo ci mensi pe mi cu nelci la rikis.martin.

Two of my three sisters like Ricky Martin.

This states two facts. First, that I have three sisters (though it is not actually true in my case!) Second, that two of them like Ricky Martin (it doesnt actually state that my third sister hates himshe may be indifferent to him, or never have heard of him). If I use le in the same sentence, it isnt actually wrong, but it allows the possibility that I have, say, five sisters, but Im only talking about three of them! This is one of the few areas where le and lo are not like the and a/some. But with people in general, rather than a specific group of people I know, I would have to say something in the order of 4,037,194,262 out of the 6,312,158,093 (existing) humans like Ricky Martin

vo kio nocize kio pasovo kio rexare lo xa kio cipare kio pamubi kio nosoci remna cu nelci la rikis.martin.

meaning, I would have to give the real counts for all humans, and for all humans who suffer from that particular affliction. Which obviously is not terribly practical. (The real counts, I mean, not the affliction. Though on second thought...) One way out of this problem is to use fiu, which is like the Lojban slash sign. So two out of every three people is really 2/3 of people, or refiuci loi prenu. Of course, this is actually a fraction, and fractions have decimal equivalents; you could also say pixaxaxa loi prenu, and not be that far offeven if your use of decimals might have some people laughing in the aisles...

Yes, thats our new friend loi in that sentence. If I had said refiuci lo prenu, that would have to be understood in the same way as re lo prenu or ci lo prenu (i.e. as a count of individuals), and I would have ended up talking about two thirds of a person. In most cultures, chopping up persons into thirds is not considered acceptable behaviour even for pollsters or advertisers. On the other hand, chopping up populations into thirds is perfectly acceptable; and thats what loi prenu is. (A population, I mean, not an acceptable. Though on second thought...) Here are some more proportions:
mi tcica pimu lei prenu

I fooled half of the people (treating the people as a mass, or population) I fooled one out of two people (which means exactly the same thing) I fooled one out of the two cats (treating the cats as individuals) I am familiar with 410 out of the 1342 (existing) gismu

mi tcica pafiure lei prenu mi tcica pa le re mlatu

mi se slabu vopano lo pacivore gismu

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Chapter 4. Numbers and more articles

Quantities

Ive said that words like most and many are numbers in Lojban, which is pretty logical if you think about it. The following numbers are particularly useful:
no ro due soa soe soi soo

none (weve already seen this as zero) each / all too many almost all most many / a lot of several few at most at least

sou sue suo

Some examples:
no le ninmu cu nelci la bil. no lo ninmu cu nelci la bil.

None of the women like Bill. No women like Bill.

coi rodo

(because lo ninmu potentially includes all women that exist) Hi, everyone

mi nelci ro lo mlatu mi na nelci ro lo gerku

I like all cats.

Its not true that I like all dogs.

soi lo merko cu nelci la nirvanas.

(This is not the same as I dont like any dogs, which would be mi nelci no lo gerku. There are other ways of saying this, but we havent got enough grammar under our belt yet.) Many Americans like Nirvana

(The group, not the mystical state. Although on second thought...)

Note: Yes, names are ambiguous in Lojban, because theyre used Humpty-Dumpty style: they mean what the speaker means.

sou lo jungo cu nelci la nirvanas. sue mu le muno prenu cu cmila

Few Chinese people like Nirvana. No more than five out of the fifty people laugh(ed)

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Chapter 4. Numbers and more articles

suo pa lo prenu cu prami do

(Lets say a comedian told a bad joke). At least one person loves you.

This last sentence is logically the same as lo prenu cu prami do, which means there exists at least one person such that that person loves you, but it makes the meaning clearer and more emphatic. In fact, all articles in Lojban have such default numbers associated with them; lo by default means suo pa lo ro at least one out of all....

Vocabulary
batci cinba cifnu

melbi

gerku

citka

rectu

nanmu

mlatu

x1 bites/pinches x2 on/at specific locus x3 with x4 x1 is an infant/baby [helpless through youth/incomplete development] of species x2 x1 (agent) kisses/busses x2 at locus x3 x1 eats/ingests/consumes (transitive verb) x2 x1 is a dog/canine/[bitch] of species/breed x2 x1 is beautiful/pleasant to x2 in aspect x3 (ka) by aesthetic standard x4 x1 is a cat/[puss/pussy/kitten] [feline animal] of species/breed x2; (adjective:) x1 is feline x1 is a man/men; x1 is a male humanoid person [not necessarily adult] x1 is a quantity of/contains meat/flesh from source/animal x2

Exercise 3
Translate the following sentences. 1. All babies are beautiful. 2. The pack of three cats bite the dog. 3. What a surprise! Mei Li loves two men. (use an attitudinal indicator) 4. Most men love at least one woman. 5. It is not true that all men love at least one woman. 6. The group of four women kiss Ricky Martin. 7. Its a shame that no-one likes Bill. (use an attitudinal indicator) 8. Rosemarys baby bites two people (separately). 9. One in three women like David Bowie. 10. No more than 15% of Buddhists eat meat. (Buddhist is budjo, as you may remember from Lesson 3). 11. Nine out of ten cats like Whiskas. (use a cmene)

Number Questions

All question words in Lojban are requests to fill in an unknown value: ma asks for an unknown sumti, and mo for an unknown selbri. In Lojban xo is the question word for numbers. So, remembering the sentence re lo mi ci mensi cu nelci la rikis.martin., how would I answer the following question?

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Chapter 4. Numbers and more articles xo le mensi cu nelci la rikis.martin.

The answer, of course, is re. (But not all questions that can be answered with a number have to take xo, as well see in the next lesson).
Tip: xo is also used in mathematics, as in
li ci sui vo du li xo

3+4=?

A few more examples:

xo le botpi cu kunti

xo lo prenu cu klama ti do viska xo lo sonci

How many of the bottles are empty? How many people come here? How many soldiers do you see?
Note: It is not actually necessary to include the lo after xo. In fact, it isnt necessary after any numberfor example ci lo gerku could be simply ci gerku, if you prefer. However, some Lojbanists prefer to keep the lo for the sake of clarity.

Lojban has no difference between singular and plural: the dog and the dogs can both be le gerku. But suppose you wanted to make a distinction between the two; how would you do it?

A final question

Summary

In addition to numbers (and their associated questions), this lesson has entered the dangerous waters of Lojban articles. Lojban articles may seem difficult at first, but they are perfectly logical. In fact its probably because they are logical that people have problems with them to start off withyou have to learn to think in a slightly different way. For the curious, here are the main articles and article-like words:
la

le lo li

that named that described that which really is the number

(lu is not an article, its a quotation mark!)

lae lee

the referent of (not really an article, as it takes a full sumti or pro-sumti, as in laediu, what the last sentence refers to, as opposed to diu, the actual words of the last sentence.) the stereotypical

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Chapter 4. Numbers and more articles loe

the typical

lai

lei loi

the mass named the mass described the mass which really is

lai lei loi

the set named the set described the set which really is

(Sets turn out to be pretty useful in Lojban, as well see towards the end of this course.)

We also looked briefly at luo, which turns a set into a mass, and lua, which turns a mass into a set of individuals (group and ungroup). Strictly speaking, these arent articles, though.

If all this looks terribly complicated, dont be discouraged! As you can see, these articles are all really variants on la, le and lo, which are normally all you will need. My personal advice (not official Lojban policy!) is when in doubt, use le. This is because the only time le is completely wrong is with a cmene (which needs la, of course). If you use le where another article would be more appropriate, you may not express yourself as clearly as you wanted, but at least you will not be talking ungrammatical nonsense, like you would if you said der Frau in German, or the two womans in English.

Answers to Exercises Exercise 1

1. 35: li cimu 2. 4,802: li vobinore or li vo kio binore (the spaces are optional) 3. 6,000: li xa kio or li xanonono 4. 7.54: li ze pimuvo (again, the space is optional) 5. 6,891,573.905: li xa kio bisopa kio muzeci pisonomu (if that looks long, try writing it as a word in English!)

Exercise 2
1. Individual. The students might have been in a group while listening to the radio, but listening to the radio is something a person is capable of doing on their own. 2. Mass. The students worked together to make the radio, so you cannot say of any one student that they made the radio on their own. 3. Mass. In fact, sugar is a mass noun even in English, because it is very hard to think of it as individual entities. (Even when we do say three sugars in English, were thinking of teaspoons, or kinds of sugar, not individual grains; so in fact, were talking about two or more distinct masses of sugar.) Thats why sugar does not normally take an article in English. 4. Individual. Radios are easy to think of as individual units. But Lojban does allow you to treat the radios youve purchased as a mass, if thats useful to you (particularly if youre buying in bulk.)

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Chapter 4. Numbers and more articles 5. Mass. The statement is not necessarily true of individual elephants, but it is true of elephants as a whole. (To stress that elephants normally live to an old age, you would have to attribute long life, not to the mass of elephants, but to the typical elephant: loe xanto, rather than loi xanto.) 6. Individual. All elephants by definition (as it were) have flat ears; so the claim is true of each individual elephant. Once again, however, it makes perfect sense in Lojban to make that claim of the mass of elephants, as well. 7. Individual. Talking may be a group activity, but liking is something you do individually, and the students are being described as likers first, and as talkers second.

Exercise 3
1. ro lo cifnu cu melbi 2. lei ci mlatu cu batci le gerku (or: luo ci le mlatu cu batci le gerku. If you have luo le ci mlatu cu batci le gerku, youre implying that the three cats are the only three cats you have in mind, whereas luo ci le mlatu leaves it open that there are other cats around.) 3. .ue la meilis. prami re lo nanmu 4. soe lo nanmu cu prami suo pa lo ninmu 5. ro lo nanmu na prami suo pa lo ninmu 6. luo vo lo ninmu cu cinba la rikis.martin. (Give yourself a pat on the back if you got that one right! If you said loi vo lo ninmu, give yourself a whole backrub! Though you may need help with that...) 7. .uinai [or .uu] no lo prenu cu prami la bil. or suo pa lo prenu na prami la bil. (Lojban na is somewhat odd to Englishspeakers, since it behaves exactly like logical it is not the case; the sentence literally means It is not the case that at least one person likes Bill (i.e. It is not the case that even one person likes Bill.) But the interaction of negation and quantifiers is beyond the scope of these lessons; for more, see The Complete Lojban Language, Chapter 16.9.) 8. le la ROZmeris. cifnu cu batci re lo prenu (or: le cifnu pe la ROZmeris. ...) 9. pafiuci loi ninmu cu nelci la deivyd.bo,is. (or: pafiuci luo lo ninmu cu nelci la deivyd.bo,is.) 10. sue pipamu loi budjo cu citka lo rectu (or: sue pipamu luo lo budjo cu citka lo rectu) 11. sofiupano loi mlatu cu nelci la .uiskas. (a Commonwealth slogan for a brand of cat food) (or: sofiupano luo lo mlatu cu nelci la .uiskas.)

The dog would be le pa gerku. Normally, we wouldnt bother with the pa though, unless we wanted to make it quite clear that we only have one dog in mind. The dogs would be le suo re gerku (or lei suo re gerku, if were thinking of them as a group)the at least two dogs. However, it is hard to think of many situations where you would need to say this. Like some other languages (e.g. Chinese), Lojban normally leaves number up to context. You guessed it youve just spent all this time learning to say how many people, dogs etc. there are, and pisoe of the time, you dont need to! But, like many features of Lojban, it can be very useful when you want it, so please dont feel tricked. Oh, what does pisoe mean? That, I will leave as an exercise to the reader...

A final question

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Chapter 5. Times, days, dates (and abstractions)

What is the time?
One way to ask the question What is the time? is ma tcika ti. We know that ma is the sumti question word (what), so tcika must be a selbri meaning is the time. The place structure of tcika is x1 (hours, minutes, seconds) is the time of state/event x2 on day/date x3, at location x4, by calendar x5 So in Lojban, times do not exist in the abstract: times are always the times of something. So we ask what the time is of ti, meaning this event/thing, or, in other words now.
Note: Well, we dont really; stay tuned for next lesson, where well fill this in a little more.

A full answer would obviously be very long-winded, but remembering the Lojban convention that you miss out all the places after the last one you really need, a typical exchange would be:
ma tcika ti li papa

Whats the time? Eleven

Note the li, since we are talking about a number here. li papa is short for li papa cu tcika tithe number eleven is the time of this (event).

If we want to be a bit more precise, we need to use pie. This introduces fractional parts of numbers like pi, but unlike pi it doesnt need to indicate decimal fractions in a number. In fact, the kind of fractional part it does indicate can vary within the same number. In normal counting, pi is a decimal point, in hexadecimal its a hexadecimal point and so on, but the kind of fraction it indicates never changes its value. But pie doesnt have that restriction; so we can use it to separate hours from minutes (which are sixtieths of hours), or, as we will see below, days from hours (which are twenty-fourths of days). pie, in other words, means part, not decimal point. So an alternative answer to the question could be
li papa pie mu

11:05 (Five past eleven) (The number eleven, and five parts)

or if you want to be particularly precise,

li papa pie mu pie pabi

Five minutes and eighteen seconds past eleven

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Chapter 5. Times, dates, abstractions

(The number eleven, and five parts, and eighteen parts of parts) Lets imagine, though, that the time is not five past eleven, but five to eleven. We can say li pano pie mumu (10:55), but we can also say li papa pie niu mu, where niu is the Lojban minus sign (for negative numbers, not for subtraction)what we are saying is 11:5. For half past eleven you can also use pi and say li papa pimu 11.5. I dont particularly like this method, but it is perfectly good Lojban. If we are using numbers for times, it is normal to use the 24hour system, so 6 PM is li pabi (18:00).

If you want to use twelve-hour time instead, you need some way of distinguishing between AM and PM. The conventional way in Lojban is to use cmene for hours (so we can add supplementary information like that later on, as part of the cmene.) So four oclock is la vocac., five oclock is la mucac. and so on (from cacra hour). For 11 and 12 we need extra numbers. Fortunately Lojban has these and more; the number system actually goes up to 16 (hexadecimal), so we have the extra numbers
dau fei gai

jau rei vai

10 11 12 13 14 15

Obviously for anything other than talking about computer programming, the numbers 1315 are useless, but we can use 1012 for hours. Ten oclock under this scheme is la daucac., eleven oclock is la feicac., and twelve oclock is la gaicac. . For morning and evening we can then add lir. and lec., meaning early and late (from clira and lerci). So la mucac. lir. is five in the morning. As you can see, things start to get a little messy with the 12-hour system (how do you say 9:22 AM?), so the 24-hour system is preferred by popular acclamation.

Exercise 1
What are the following times in Lojban? 1. Nine oclock 2. Eleven oclock in the morning 3. Two in the afternoon 4. A quarter to twelve 5. Midnight 6. 9:25 7. 12:15 8. 14:30 9. 17:03 10. 20:00:03 11. 21:54:16.71

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Chapter 5. Times, dates, abstractions

Times and Events

If we want to give the time of an event, rather than just tell the time, we need to fill in some more places. The second place of tcika is state/event: people dont have timesevents have times. So we need some way to show that the sumti in this position is a state or an event, and not a thing. But
la daucac. tcika le mi klama

wont work; it does not mean Ten oclock is the time that I go (or come!), but Ten oclock is the time of my goer, which is meaningless. We get round this problem with the word nu, which meansyou guessed itstate/event. This is called an abstraction descriptor (or abstractor for short), other common descriptors being ka (quality or property), ni (amount) and so on (for a complete list, see The Complete Lojban Language, p. 269). What nu does here is allow us to put a whole bridi into a selbri place, and by extension (if we put an article in front of it) a sumti place. The sequence goes a little like this:
la robin. salci

Robin celebrates Logfest is an event such that Robin celebratesLogfest is Robins celebration/celebrating I like the event such that Robin celebratesI like Robins celebration/Robin celebrating

la jbonunsalci cu nu la robin. salci

mi nelci le nu la robin salci.

When used to introduce a sumti, nu is usually written together with the article (le or lo), but is actually a separate word. So what we want is
la daucac. tcika lenu mi klama

(note that there is no cu here, since la daucac. is a cmene)

Exercise 2
What do these Lojban sentences mean? 1. li pamu pie reno tcika lenu mi dunda le cukta do 2. li ze tcika lenu tivni la SEsamis.strit. 3. li pa tcika lenu mi ciska 4. la klaudias. nelci lenu zoe vecnu loi kabri la .iulias. 5. la tim. nelci lenu li paso tcika lenu la meiris. cliva

Times and Events, Improved: Conversion

If Ten oclock is the time that I go sounds backwards, there are two ways you can switch it round. One is using se, which swaps the first and second places of any bridi.

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Chapter 5. Times, dates, abstractions le nu mi klama cu se tcika la daucac.

means exactly the same thing as la daucac. tcika lenu mi klama. se coincidentally is pretty much the same as Spanish se, but is actually part of a series along with te, ve and xe, which switch around the first and third, first and fourth, and first and fifth places of a selbri. (This kind of swapping is known as conversion.) te, ve and xe arent used so much in sentences as se, but are often used in making lujvo (compound words), as well see later in the course. This conversion business, of course, doesnt apply just to sentences with abstractions in them, but to any bridi. You may want to change things around for different emphasis (people tend to mention the more important things in a sentence first), or as above, to work around the complexity of Lojban grammar (cu is a very powerful tool.) So the following pairs mean the same thing:
mi viska do

I see you

do se viska mi

le nanmu cu klama lo barja

You are seen by me

The man goes to a bar

la spot. mlatu la .abisinian.

A bar is gone to by the man Spot is a feline of the breed Abyssinian

la .abisinian. se mlatu la spot.

lo barja cu se klama le nanmu

lenu mi cilre fi la lojban. cu xamgu mi

Abyssinian is the breed of cat Spot is My learning Lojban is good for me

mi se xamgu lenu mi cilre fi la lojban

I am benefitted by my learning Lojban

Rearrange these Lojban sentences so that the main selbri in each sentence is converted to having se. Dont forget to use cu if you need to! For example, mi viska do do se viska mi 1. mi prami la meilis. 2. le mlatu cu catra le jipci 3. la mari,as. vecnu le mlatu 4. la mari,as. dunda la .iulias. la klaudias. 5. la mari,as. vecnu zoe la tim. 6. la fits.djerald. fanva fi le glico 7. klama la bast,n. fu le karce 8. li ze tcika lenu tivni la SEsamis.strit. (Leave the bridi with tivni alone.) 9. la klaudias. nelci lenu zoe vecnu loi kabri la .iulias. (Convert the bridi with vecnu as well as the bridi with nelci.)

Exercise 3

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Chapter 5. Times, dates, abstractions 10. la tim. nelci lenu li paso tcika lenu la meiris. cliva (Convert all three selbri.)

Times and Events, Improved #2: sumti tcita

With conversion and se, you have a new and powerful tool to use in your Lojban. But you might still find lenu mi klama cu se tcika la daucac. too long and clumsy. In that case, get ready for more Lojban tricks.

It would be really nice if klama had a place for the time of going/coming, but it doesnt. (After all, you wouldnt really want to have to learn a six-place selbri!) To get round this problem of missing places in selbri, Lojban has a series of cmavo (structure words) which add extra places to the selbri. The one we want here is tiu, meaning occurring at the time of day.... So we can now say I am going at 10:00
mi klama tiu la daucac.

klama now expresses a relationship between six things: a goer, a destination, a source, a route, a

vehicle, and a time at which this all takes place.

So why, you may ask, didnt I just say that in the first place? I could have done, but then you wouldnt have found out about nu and se! There is more to this lesson than meets the eye.
Note: Different types of cmavo belong to different classes (se cmavo or selmao). For example, all articles (apart from those specific to cmene, like la) belong to the same class, and all of them can appear in the same place in a sentence. This selmao is called LE, after the most widely used cmavo in the class, le. Likewise, the cmavo that introduce new sumti into a bridi belong to the class BAIso named from bai, the cmavo meaning forced by. (This type of cmavo is also called sumti tcita sumti labels.) We will be seeing more of these cmavo in the lessons ahead.

Days and Months

The days of the week are also cmene built from numbers, this time adding djed., from djedi, meaning day. There is at present some disagreement about which day should be day one, though. The original convention was to follow the Judaeo-Christian convention of taking Sunday as the first day, giving Sunday Monday Tuesday
la padjed. la redjed. la cidjed.

... and so on. (Conveniently for one of your authors, this matches Greek for Monday through to Thursday.) However, in a Logical Language Group meeting in 1992 it was agreed that Monday be day 1, and Sunday be either 7 (la zedjed.) or zero (la nodjed.) according to taste (much to at least one of your authors inconvenience.) Eventually, though, people will use whichever system they prefer until one becomes universally accepted. This may sound chaotic, but I have gone into this point as a good example of how in Lojban a large part of the language is left to usagemeaning that ultimately the language depends on the way people choose to use it in practice. People are also free to work out alternative conventions for cultures which do not use a seven-day week, possibly adding to the name to make it clear; e.g. la padjedjung. could be the first day of the Chinese ten-day week. (Remember, jungo means Chinese.)

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Chapter 5. Times, dates, abstractions Note: For these lessons, of course, we do have to teach somethingand that something will be that Monday is Day 1. That, of course, is already getting in the way of usage, but its unavoidable. Tip: You will also see days in full lujvo form (meaning in practice one extra consonant after the number), looking like this:
no(n)djed. or nondei pa(v)djed. or pavdei re(l)djed. or reldei ci(b)djed. or cibdei vo(n)djed. or vondei mu(m)djed. or mumdei xa(v)djed. or xavdei ze(l)djed. or zeldei

0-day 1-day 2-day 3-day 4-day 5-day 6-day 7-day (= 0-day)

Months also use numbered cmene, adding mast. (from masti month), so January is la pamast. and so on. Again, since there are twelve months, we use the extra numbers, so October is la daumast. .
Note: You will also see months in full lujvo formthe catch being that hexadecimal digits have not been assigned rafsi (combining forms.) So:
pa(v)mast. or pavmai

1-month
re(l)mast. or relmai

2-month
ci(b)mast. or cibmai

3-month
vo(n)mast. or vonmai

4-month
mu(my)mast. or mumymai

5-month
xa(v)mast. or xavmai

6-month
ze(l)mast. or zelmai

7-month
bi(v)mast. or bivmai

8-month
so(z)mast. or sozmai

9-month
daumast. or pavnonmast. or pavnonmai

10-month

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Chapter 5. Times, dates, abstractions

feimast. or pavypavmast. or pavypavmai

11-month
gaimast. or pavrelmast. or pavrelmai

12-month

Just in case youre interested, the words for seasons are:

vensa crisa critu dunra

Spring Summer Autumn Winter

(For full definitions of these words, see the gismu list.) If the seasons where you live dont match this pattern, then you can easily create new words. For example, the rainy season or monsoon could be carvycitsi (from carvi, rain, and citsi, season) or simply la carv. . Here are some I made up for fun to give a better idea of the weather in the UK:
la lekcarv. la mliglacarv. la bifcarv. la dujycarv.

the cold rainSpring the warm (mildly-hot) rainSummer the windy rainAutumn the freezing rainWinter

Joking aside, this shows two features of word-building in Lojban: making cmene by losing the final vowel (which we saw in Lesson 1) and creating lujvo, or compound words. (For the same reason, youll also see pavdjed., relmast., ...) You actually need a pretty good knowledge of Lojban to make up lujvo on the spot, but well learn how to make some simple lujvo later on in this course.

Exercise 4
What are these days and months in Lojban? 1. Saturday 2. Thursday 3. March 4. August 5. November 6. December

Dates

The gismu for dates is detri: x1 is the date (day, week, month, year) of state/event x2, at location x3, by calendar x4 Phew! Like tcika, though, most places of detri can be left out. The location is only important if were talking about radically different timezones, or different planets, and the calendar is normally assumed to be the standard Western oneif you want to use, for example, the Arabic or Chinese calendars, you

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Chapter 5. Times, dates, abstractions

can put le xrabo or le jungo in the fourth place. (As always, context is importantin a discussion of Islamic history we would probably assume that the Arabic calendar was being used.) To prevent confusion, the following conventions are used:

The tricky bit is the number in x1. Normally we dont want to specify the day, week, month and year! If there is only one number, it is the day e.g. li pano is the 10th.

If there are two numbers, they are the day and month e.g. li pano pie pare is 10/12, or the 10th of December. If there are three numbers, they are day, month, year (not month, day, year, as in the American convention) e.g. li repa pie ze pie pasoxaso is 21/7/69the date of the first moon landing.

We can therefore say

li repa pie ze pie pasoxaso cu detri lenu lo remna cu klama le lunra

21/7/1969 is-the-date-of the-event a human goes (to) the moon

Now, just as with tcika, we often want to put the event firstafter all, in most languages we would normally say My birthday is on the fifteenth of August rather than The fifteenth of August is the date of my birthday. We can manage this change by using place tags, e.g.
fe lenu mi jbena [kei] cu detri fa li pamu pie bi

the-event I am-born is-dated 15/8

but it is easier to use se, like this:

lenu mi jbena cu se detri li pamu pie bi

the-event I am-born is-dated 15/8

In both cases, putting the lenu phrase before the cu is convenientand a well-established Lojban trick of the trade: cu is powerful enough to close off any structure in front of it, including lenu mi jbena.

As you have probably guessed, there is also a sumti tcita for dated: dei, which works like tiu (notice how sumti tcita tend to be similar to the selbri they suggest). So the other way I can tell you my birthday is:
mi jbena dei li pamu pie bi

Question. If only one number is used with detri, it is the day. So how do we say what year an event happened without giving the day and month as well? The gismu for year, nanca cannot be used instead of detri, since it has the place-structure x1 is x2 years in duration, by standard x3 i.e. it gives the length of an event in years, not the year when an event happened. One way out is to use a cmene for the year, so the year I (Robin) am writing this would be la pasososonanc. (And the year I (Nick) am writing this would be la renonopananc..)
Tip: You will also see year names ending in nan: la renonopanan.

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Chapter 5. Times, dates, abstractions Tip: More recently there has been a proposal to make single numbers refer by default to year rather than day; the controversy on this has not settled down yet.

Vocabulary
cnino dablea facki gugde fraso guntrusio jecygaibai joi selpeicku

x1 is new/unfamiliar/novel to observer x2 in feature x3 (ka) by standard x4; x1 is a novelty conquer, sieze (war-take) x1 discovers/finds out x2 (duu) about subject/object x3; x1 finds (fi) x3 (object) x1 is the country of peoples x2 with land/territory x3; (people/territory relationship) x1 reflects French/Gallic culture/nationality/language in aspect x2 Communist (work-govern-idea) revolution (government-change-force) Joins two sumti together as a mass. Well have more to say about this later. manifesto (thought-book)

Give the dates to answer these questions, using cmene for the years. If you dont happen to know them, thats OK theyre given at the bottom of the exercise. 1. lenu la kolombus. facki lo cnino gugde cu se detri ma 2. la mexmet. dablea la konstantiNUpolis. dei ma 3. lenu fraso jecygaibai cu se detri ma 4. la marks. joi la .engels. finti le guntrusio selpeicku ku dei ma 5. la muxamed. klama la medinas. dei ma (1492; 1453; 1789; 1848; 622)

Exercise 5history quiz

Summary

Apart from times and dates, this lesson has covered some important points of Lojban grammar. Some simple lujvo. The abstractor for states and events, nu, and its terminator, kei. Conversionswapping round placeswith se. The sumti tcita: tiu (with time) and dei (with date).

Vocabulary
barja birje botpi briju

cpedu djica

denpa

dotco

jimpe

x1 is a tavern/bar/pub serving x2 to audience/patrons x3 x1 is made of/contains/is a amount of beer/ale/brew brewed from x2 x1 is a bottle/jar/urn/flask/closable container for x2, made of material x3 with lid x4 x1 is an office/bureau/work-place of worker x2 at location x3 x1 requests/asks/petitions/solicits for x2 of/from x3 in manner/form x4 x1 awaits/waits/pauses for/until x2 at state x3 before starting/continuing x4 (activity/process) x1 desires/wants/wishes x2 (event/state) for purpose x3 x1 reflects German/Germanic culture/nationality/language in aspect x2 x1 understands/comprehends fact/truth x2 (duu) about subject x3; x1 understands (fi) x3

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Chapter 5. Times, dates, abstractions

lerci

nandu pinxe

penmi sruma viska

tcita

xebni zvati

x1 (event) is late by standard x2 x1 is difficult/hard/challenging for x2 under conditions x3; x1 challenges (non-agentive) x2 x1 meets/encounters x2 at/in location x3 x1 (agent) drinks/imbibes beverage/drink/liquid refreshment x2 from/out-of container/source x3 x1 assumes/supposes that x2 (duu) is true about subject x3 x1 is a label/tag of x2 showing information x3 (as in sumti tcita) x1 sees/views/perceives visually x2 under conditions x3 x1 hates/despises x2 (object/abstraction); x1 is full of hate for x2; x2 is odious to x1 x1 (object/event) is at/attending/present at x2 (event/location)

Exercise 6
Translate the following from Lojban: Note: In the following, there are some instances of nu which would properly be expressed using duu instead. Since you dont know what duu is yet, use nu for now, but stay tuned for Lesson 7. Note: Youll notice that every new sentence begins with .i. That is in fact the default for Lojban, which does not rely on punctuation or intonation for its grammatical structure: .i is used consistently to separate one sentence in running text from the next. 1. .i la jan. cu zvati le barja (Though you might not be able to tell, this is in fact Zhang. Remember from Lesson 1 that final ng in names is changed to n.) 2. .i la jan. denpa lenu la suzyn. zvati le barja 3. .i la jan. cpedu fi le dunda fe re birje 4. .i lenu pinxe loi dotco birje cu se nelci la jan. 5. .i .uu la suzyn. loi dotco birje cu xebni 6. .i la jan. djica lenu li reno pi mu tcika lenu la suzyn. klama 7. .i li repa tcika lenu la jan. djuno lenu la suzyn. na klama 8. .i pinxe pici le pa birje 9. .i la jan. cliva le barja

Exercise 7 (Advanced)
Translate into Lojban (but only if youre feeling intrepid!): 1. Susan goes to the bar at 22:00 from the office. 2. Susan assumes that Zhang knows that Susan is late. (Hint: actually even harder than it looks. Look carefully at the definition of the gismu for late.) 3. Susan sees one of the two bottles. 4. It is not difficult for Susan to understand that Zhang left. (Hint: try it as To understand that Zhang left is not difficult for Susan.) 5. At 22:15, Susan wants to meet Jyoti at 22:45.

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Chapter 5. Times, dates, abstractions

Answers to Exercises Exercise 1

1. la socac. or li so 2. la feicac. lir. 3. la recac. lec. 4. li papa pie niu pamu or li pare pie vomu. (You can also use the hexadecimal digits, if you like, though this will probably be less common: li gai pie niu pamu, li fei pie vomu.) 5. la nocac. or la gaicac. lir. (if you follow the convention that midnight is 12 AM) 6. li so pie remu 7. li pare pie pamu 8. li pavo pie cino or li pavopimu 9. li paze pie ci 10. li reno pie no pie ci 11. li repa pie muvo pie paxa pi zepa (The last component is just an ordindary decimal point.)

Exercise 2
1. 15:20 is the time that I gave the book to you. 2. 7:00 is the time that [someone] broadcasts Sesame Street; 7:00 is the time that Sesame Street is broadcast. 3. 1:00 is the time that I write [something] 4. Claudia likes that [someone] sells cups to Julia; Claudia likes Julia buying cups. 5. Tim likes that 19:00 is the time that Mary leaves; Tim likes it that Mary leaves at 19:00.

Exercise 3
1. la meilis. se prami mi (Mei Li is loved by me.) 2. le jipci cu se catra le mlatu (The bird is killed by the cat.) 3. le mlatu cu se vecnu la mari,as. (The cat is sold by Maria. You now need cu, to prevent mlatu and se vecnu running together into the one tanru.) 4. la .iulias. se dunda la mari,as. la klaudias. (Julia is given by Maria to Claudia. As the third place, la klaudias. is unaffected by the conversion, and stays where it is.) 5. zoe se vecnu la mari,as. la tim. (Something is sold by Maria to Tim. The same holds for the third place here as in the previous sentence.) 6. [zoe] se fanva la fits.djerald. le glico ([Something] is translated by Fitzgerald into English. The original sentence has an empty x2 place; so there is nothing there to swap with x1. But of course, when a sumti is left out, you can assume its value to be zoewhich you can still leave out even after conversion. And now that there is an explicit x2 place there, you dont need fi any more to introduce the x3 place.) 7. la bast,n. se klama fu le karce (Boston is gone to by car.) 8. lenu tivni la SEsamis.strit. cu se tcika li ze (The broadcasting of Sesame Street is at the time 7:00. The cu is actually necessary, here, even though it follows a cmene; can you work out why?)

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Chapter 5. Times, dates, abstractions 9. lenu loi kabri cu se vecnu zoe la .iulias. cu se nelci la klaudias. (That cups are sold by someone to Julia is liked by Claudia; cups being sold to Julia is something Claudia likes..) 10. lenu lenu se cliva la meiris. [cu] se tcika li paso cu se nelci la tim. (The fact that [something] being left by Mary is at the time 19:00 is liked by Tim; [the place] being left by Mary at 19:00 is something Tim likes. Yes, I know its horrible.)

Exercise 4
1. la xadjed. or la xavdjed. or la xavdei 2. la vodjed. or la vondjed. or la vondei 3. la cimast. or la cibmast. or la cibmai 4. la bimast. or la bivmast. or la bivmai 5. la feimast. or la pavypavmast. or la pavypavmai 6. la gaimast. or la pavrelmast. or la pavrelmai

Exercise 5
1. la pavosorenanc. 2. la pavomucinanc. 3. la pazebisonanc. 4. la pabivobinanc. 5. la xarerenanc. (or la pananc., if youre using the Muslim calendar)

Exercise 6
1. Zhang is at the bar. 2. Zhang waits for Susan to be at the bar. 3. Zhang asks the giver for two beers (and no, thats not necessarily what youd call a waiter, but that is nonetheless a legitimate if laconic description of what waiters do. Lojban grammar tends to be pedantic, but Lojban descriptions can be rather sparse.) 4. Drinking German beer is liked by Zhang 5. Alas, Susan hates German beer. 6. Zhang wants 20:30 to be the time Susan will come. (Zhang is using the fraction pimu, unlike me.) 7. 21:00 is the time Zhang knows that Susan is not coming 8. Look! Hes drinking 0.3 of one beer. (Any bridi with its x1 missing is considered an observative.) 9. Zhang leaves the bar.

Exercise 7
1. .i la suzyn. klama le barja tiu li rere le briju (Because the time of day has its own sumti tcita already, it doesnt really matter where in the sentence you place it. So .i la suzyn. tiu li rere klama le barja le briju means exactly the same thing.)

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Chapter 5. Times, dates, abstractions 2. .i la suzyn. sruma {lenu la jan. djuno {lenu lerci fa {lenu la suzyn. klama}}} (Lojban insists on distinguishing between events and entities; you cant say that someone is late in Lojban, but only that someones action is late. There are ways in Lojban for working around this, but they are considered advanced Lojban (see Lesson 15.) And yes, thats a rather deeply nested sentence. Lojban tends, for better or worse, to make things more explicit, and thus more complex, than is usual for natural languages. The normal word order version is even worse: .i la suzyn. sruma {lenu la jan. djuno {lenu {lenu la suzyn. klama} cu lerci}}.) 3. .i la suzyn. viska pa le re botpi 4. .i {lenu jimpe {lenu la jan. cliva}} na nandu la suzyn. 5. tiu li rere pie pamu la suzyn. djica {lenu penmi la djiotis. tiu li rere pie vomu} (Extra credit if you worked through that one!) Note: As noted in the Introduction, those brackets are there for clarification only; you wont normally see them in Lojban text. The whole point of having a syntactically unambiguous language, after all, is that you shouldnt have to use brackets in the first place!

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Chapter 6. Time and Spacebasic Lojban tenses

Terminators
Before we go on any further, weve left a little unfinished business from the previous lesson. This opens up a whole new set of issues, which is why weve held it over for this lesson.

Remember that when we speak of dates in Lojban, we also need to specify the place on the globe where the date was calculated. The instant Neil Armstrong made that small step for (a) man, for instance, it wasnt the 21st of July everywhere on Earth. In Tokyo, it was closer to the 22nd. So if we want to point out that it was the 21st, Houston time, we need to specify the x3 place of detri. That means we can simply say:
li repa pie ze pie pasoxaso cu detri lenu lo remna cu klama le lunra la xustyn.

Actually, no. Look at that sentence again. How would we say that the 21st was the day Armstrong went to the moon [going] from Houston? You guessed it
li repa pie ze pie pasoxaso cu detri lenu lo remna cu klama le lunra la xustyn.

right?

So now (Houston), we have a problem. Which selbri does la xustyn. belong to in this sentence? klama, or This kind of ambiguity is nothing new to natural languages, which tend to resolve problems like these with tricks like well-positioned pauses in speech, and punctuation in writing. (Consider for instance the English sentence 21/7/69 was the date a man went to the moon, from Houston. With that comma, you can only read that as according to Houston.)
detri?

The trick Lojban uses instead, however, turns out to be one of its major selling points. Lojban uses words called terminators. No, they arent killer androids with difficult-to-spell surnames, but little words used to indicate when groups of words, such as phrases, end. You can think of them like the brackets used in mathematics, and they serve pretty much the same purpose. So in Lojban, whenever a structure begins whose length is not known in advance, a terminator goes at the end of the structure. This is what makes Lojban syntactically unambiguous:

Every time an article like le or loi starts a sumti, ku ends it. Every time a string of numbers starts, boi ends it. Every time a series of sumti follows a selbri, vau ends it.

And every time nu starts an abstractiona bridi nested inside another bridikei ends it.

This means that our sentence about the moon landing is fully elaborated like this (putting in some braces to make things clearer, and sneaking in the terminator loo corresponding to li):
[{li [repa pie ze pie pasoxaso boi] loo} cu detri [le{nu [{lo remna ku} cu klama {le lunra ku} vau] kei} ku] la xustyn. vau]

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Chapter 6. Time and Space

The kei goes before la xustyn. . This means that as a sumti, la xustyn. cannot belong to klama: kei has cordoned off the places of klama from the rest of the sentence (and the places of detri.) So la xustyn. can only be a sumti of the main selbri, detri.

The reader may well be wondering at this point how come theyve never seen one of these terminators before. The reason is that Lojban is still meant to be spoken by humans, and keeping track of every single structure used in a sentence is more work than is reasonable to expect of any human. So when the sequence of words has an unambiguous structure, the terminators can be dropped out. For example, if we see cu in a sentence, we know that what is coming up is a selbri; so the sumti before it must now be over. So we can drop the ku. (In fact, thats why cu exists in the first place: the beginning of a verb is a much more important structural break in natural languages than the end of a noun.) If a new sentence is beginningas signalled by perhaps the most distinctively Lojbanic word, the audible punctuation .ithen there can be no more sumti from the old sentence; so we drop the vau. In fact, it is only in situations of potential ambiguity, like the sentence weve been looking at, that youll get terminators appearing in normal Lojban usage at all. So our two possible interpretations of the sentence with Neil Armstrong would normally appear as: moon from Houston)
li repa pie ze pie pasoxaso cu detri {lenu lo remna cu klama le lunra la xustyn.} (date for going to the

li repa pie ze pie pasoxaso cu detri {lenu lo remna cu klama le lunra kei} la xustyn. (date for going to

the moon according to Houston)

Note: Remember those pesky possessive constructions from Lesson 3, when you couldnt flip le tamne pe le ninmu klama the other way around, because it was ambiguous? All you need is ku to resolve that ambiguity: le le ninmu klama ku tamne means the woman travellers cousin, and le le ninmu ku klama tamne means the womans traveller cousin. Still, most Lojbanists think the flip-around is not worth the hassle of inserting that bothersome ku, so you rarely see it used when the possessor sumti is not a one-word sumti.

Vocabulary
cadzu skicu xabju zutse

x1 walks/strides/paces on surface x2 using limbs x3 x1 tells about/describes x2 (object/event/state) to audience x3 with description x4 (property) x1 dwells/lives/resides/abides at/inhabits/is a resident of location/habitat/nest/home/abode x2 x1 sits [assumes sitting position] on surface x2

Exercise 1
What do the following Lojban sentences mean when the highlighted terminators are present, and what do they mean when they are absent? 1. mi skicu li re boi re lo pendo 2. li pa pie cino tcika lenu mi prami kei la mumdjed. 3. le nanmu cu zgana le mlatu vau 4. le mamta pe le cifnu ku litru 5. mi cpedu lenu la mari,as. tavla kei la klaudias.

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Chapter 6. Time and Space

Tenses

By this time, you may be wondering what has happened to all the tenses. After all, a large part of learning a language is learning tenses, and figuring out which one you ought to be using. English, for example, has about a dozen tenses (depending on what you count as a tense) and some languages have more. Use the wrong one and youre, well, wrong. In addition, there are a load of words and phrases like before, in a while, some time ago and so on.

Lojban deals with time quite differently. Like some other languages (e.g. Chinese), tense is not compulsory. All the bridi weve looked at so far have had no particular time attached to them, and this is perfectly acceptable; in fact it is normal. Saying mi klama ti dei la padjed. is good Lojban, even if out of context we dont know if it means Im coming here next Monday, or I came here last Monday. In most cases, sentences dont happen out of context, and the context is usually enough to tell us if were talking about the past, present or future. Putting a past tense in just because the same sentence in English would be in the past tense can be rather malglico.

Time with sumti

There are times, though, when you want to say things about time, and Lojban has more than enough cmavo for this. Lets say that Zhang left the bar at 10 oclock and Susan arrived at 11 (thus missing her date). The most precise way is to use times, as in the last lesson:
la jan. cliva le barja tiu la jaucac. .i la la suzyn. klama le barja tiu la feicac. Tip: As mentioned just above, .i is used in Lojban to separate sentences from each other. You can think of it as a spoken version of the full stop (period) at the end of a sentence.

However, if the actual times are not important, we can say:

ba lenu la jan. cliva kei la suzyn. klama le barja

After Zhang left, Susan came into the bar.

or:
pu lenu la suzyn. klama le barja kei la jan. cliva

Before Susan came into the bar, Zhang left.

which translates more naturally as: When Susan came into the bar, Zhang had already left. (This, by the way, is another case of context meaning you dont have to put everything inwe havent said that the place Zhang leaves is the bar, we just understand it from the context.)

What are these bas, pus and keis? Well, the keis you hopefully remember from the section above: they close off the phrase opened by the nu. As you probably guessed, ba is after (from the gismu for future or later, balvi) and pu is before (from the gismu for past or earlier, purci). Whenever we use ba and pu like this, we are situating the time of one event relative to the time of another. The time we will most frequently want to use as a reference point is the speakers here-andnow. If we want to situate the event in the main bridi relative to the here-and-now, we can leave out the

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Chapter 6. Time and Space sumti, and just use the tense cmavo on its own. So if we want to say that Susan came to the bar some

time after right now, and not after Zhangs leaving, we can say:
baku la suzyn. klama le barja

baku here is not a city in Azerbaijan; it means afterwards or later. The ku is necessary to separate ba

from la suzyn. (you can also say it as two separate words, ba kuit makes no difference). Similarly, Zhang left earlier (than now) would be:
puku la jan. cliva Note: Whats actually going on is that ba starts a sumti, and ku ends the sumtibut the sumti itself has been left out, like we said. So ba ku means ba ... ku: after [something]. If we didnt have the ku in place, the ba would swallow up any sumti following it. So ba la jan. cliva means not afterwards Zhang left, but after Zhang, (she) left.

Lets imagine that Susan is not so unlucky, and arrives just as Zhang is leaving. We can then say: At the moment when Zhang was leaving the bar, Susan came to the bar.
ca also comes from a gismu, in this case cabna, which means simultaneous with, so another way to say ca lenu la jan. cliva le barja kei la suzyn. klama le barja

the same thing would be

lenu la jan. cliva le barja cu cabna lenu la suzyn. klama le barja

The event of Zhang leaving the bar is simultaneous with the event of Susan coming to the bar.

Note: There is a difference between ku and kei in these sentences: ku separates the ca from the rest of the sentence, while kei terminates an event. We could have said ca lenu la jan. cliva le barja ku kei ku instead: the first ku matches le barja, the kei matches nu la jan. cliva le barja, and the second ku matches lenu la jan. cliva le barja. Because the syntax is unambiguous, we could even have said lenu la jan. cliva le barja ku ku though we might be thought slightly cuckoo to say it like that.)

If you leave out the sumti following ca, the resulting phrase caku is interpreted as simultaneous with the speakers here-and-now. If something is simultaneous with the here-and-now, then of course that means it is happening now; so caku itself just means now:
caku la suzyn. klama le barja

Now, Susan goes to the bar.

Tip: By the way, caku ma tcika would be a more usual way to say What time is it?

We now have three time words: pu (before), ca (at, while) and ba (after). We can modify these with another three, zi, za and zu (series of cmavo often take an -i, -a, -u pattern, if they dont follow the AEIOU sequence). These mean a short, medium and long time distance. So puzi is a short time ago, puza is a while ago and puzu is a long time ago. How long long is depends on what were talking aboutif the subject is archaeology, puzu could be thousands of years; if youve missed your train it could be a matter of minutes. Lets say this time the unlucky Susan missed Zhang by only a few minutes. We could then say:

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Chapter 6. Time and Space bazi lenu la jan. cliva kei la suzyn. klama le barja

And if youre in the unfortunate position of having to tell Susan that shes just missed Zhang, you would say:
puziku la jan. cliva le barja

Vocabulary
kui kumfa tcidu gleki badri

x1 is sad/depressed/dejected/[unhappy/feels sorrow/grief] about x2 (abstraction) x1 is happy/gay/merry/glad/gleeful about x2 (event/state) but, however (This is an attitudinal, just like .uu and .ei) x1 is a room of/in structure x2 surrounded by partitions/walls/ceiling/floor x3 (mass/jou) x1 [agent] reads x2 [text] from surface/document/reading material x3; x1 is a reader

Translate the following. Dont forget your nus and keis! 1. Juliette went to Paris a while ago. 2. A long time ago, I read Camille. 3. Ivan just left the room.

Exercise 2

4. Yoshiko kissed Jorge just after Pierre came into the room. 5. Tracy was sad just a minute ago. But Mike is happy now.

Time and selbri

What weve looked at so far is similar to (but not quite the same as) English words like before, after and so on. However, we can use exactly the same cmavo with selbri to give effects which are similar (but not identical) to English tenses. Actually this is easier, but I left it till later to avoid the danger of malglico! Basically, any time cmavo (or sequence of cmavo) can go before a selbri and put the whole bridi into that time. This is precisely the same thing the time cmavo would be doing if followed immediately by ku, with an empty sumti in between. So
la jan. pu cliva le barja

and
puku la jan. cliva le barja

both mean Zhang before the here-and-now leaves the bar, or Zhang left the bar. We can do the same thing with zi/za/zu, so la jan. puza cliva le barja, just like puzaku la jan. cliva le barja, means Zhang left the bar a while ago.
Tip: By the way, ma ca tcika would be an even more usual way to say What time is it?

Another group of cmavo which can be used here is zei/zea/zeu. Just as zi/ze/zu indicate a short, medium or long time from the present (or whatever other time we happen to be talking about), these cmavo indicate short, medium or long durations for the action or state we are talking about. So mi zeu

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Chapter 6. Time and Space bajra means I run for a long time. (Not I am a bar for a long timethats barja! Lojban does tend to

keep you on your toes like that.) Again, we can put these together, so mi puzazeu bajra means A while ago, I ran for a long time. A few more examples ...
.oi.uinai le mi zdani puzi se lindi

Oh no! My house has just been struck by lightning! (Every language course has to have a few of these ridiculously artificial examples!)
Note: If you have a tense before the selbri you dont need cule zdani cannot run into puzi to form a single sumti.

la bil. zeu pinxe loi birje

Bill drinks beer for a long time.

Tip: Remember: you dont drink something which is a beer, but rather something which is some beer. As discussed way back in Lesson 4, that means a mass rather than an individualthough as it happens lo birje also makes sense, as a (fixed) quantity of beer.

mi bazizea xabju la djakartas.

lo la natos. vinji bazeu gunta la BE,ograd.

Pretty soon Im going to live in Jakarta for a while. NATO aircraft will attack Belgrade for a long time.
Note: This does not mean that NATO is not attacking Belgrade now (it is at the time I [Robin] am writing this). In Lojban, if we say that something is true at a particular time, it doesnt mean that it is not true at any other time. There are ways to say that NATO will continue to attack, but that comes later. (Sorry, I know I keep saying that things will come later, but you wouldnt really want to have to learn everything at onceit would be like an English course teaching will go and will have been going in the same lesson).

A complete explanation of time cmavo can be found in Chapter 10 of The Complete Lojban Language.

Translate the following, placing the tense words before the selbri. 1. I will work for a short while. 2. I will work very soon.

Exercise 3

3. I was working for a medium amount of time, a long time ago. 4. I work some time around right now. 5. Right now, Ive been working for some time.

Space

This is where things start getting strange. In Lojban, space can be a tense just as much as time. This is because there is no difference in Lojban between what traditional grammar calls prepositions and tenses. As weve seen, English, like many languages, treats a word like earlier and the past tense ending -ed as two totally separate things, while in Lojban theyre the same: they both locate an event in time. Space words like in or near are prepositions in English, and can never be tenses; but in Lojban we treat

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Chapter 6. Time and Space

them just like time words: they locate events in space. If you prefer, you can also say that Lojban treats time as a dimension, as is (conventionally) done in Einsteins physics.

Remember the word ti? This is part of a series ti, ta, tu, meaning roughly this, that and that over there. If were talking about places rather than things, we say vi, va, vu, meaning roughly here, there and yonder or way over there. Again, this is determined by the thing youre talking about. If youre telling a doctor where you feel pain, ti might be the end of your toe, while if youre talking about astronomy, ti could be the solar system. We can therefore say
viku mi gunka

Here, I work.

or, more naturally, I work here.

Weve seen that puku means before the here-and-now. Similarly, viku means in the immediate vicinity of the here-and-now, i.e. here. If we dont want to make the location relative to the speaker, but relative to something else, we can fill in the empty sumti value, in the same way, to say what the event is in the immediate vicinity of. This, of course, makes vi, va, vu acts as sumti tcita, just like dei and tiu: they add new sumti to the bridi. For example
vi la paris. mi gunka

In Paris, I work.

vu le mi zdani mi gunka

A long way from my home, I work

va lenu la KEnedis. se catra kei mi gunka

A medium distance from where Kennedy was killed, I work

Note: If kei in the last sentence wasnt there, mi would be a sumti of catra rather than gunka, so the listener might start interpreting the sentence as A medium distance from where Kennedy was killed by me ...

If we want to emphasise that something is at exactly the same location as something else (something which holds true not as often as you might think), you would use buu coinciding with:
mi sanli buu lenu la KEnedis. se catra

Im standing in the very spot where Kennedy was killed (i.e. Ive made a visit to the Texas Book Depositoryor if you prefer, the Grassy Knoll...)

Just like the time cmavo, place cmavo can be attatched to selbri. For example, instead of saying viku mi gunka, you can say mi vi gunkaI here-work. Again, this sounds odd in English, but one of the purposes of Lojban is to encourage you to say things in different ways, which may lead to being able to say different things. Lojban expands the mind (warning: unproven Lojban propaganda!). If we combine place vi etc. with words like riu, they become more productive. riu is a place cmavo meaning to the right of, so riu vi ku is in the immediate vicinity of the right of the here-and-now. What youre doing is, youre still saying where something is happening relative to you, but now you are saying in what direction to look for it. For example:
la bil. sanli riu vi ku la bil. riu vi sanli

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Chapter 6. Time and Space

Bill stands just to the right. And just like vi and buu, you can use these cmavo with an explicit sumti, to say where things are happening relative to something else:
la bil. sanli riu vi la meiris.

Bill stands just to the right of Mary.

There is a whole class of cmavo that work like riu, and they are called FAhA-type cmavo, so named after a (somewhat non-representative) member of their class, faa (in the direction of). These include too (away from), zua (to the left of), nea (next to), nei (within) and so on. (Again, all the space cmavo are explained in Chapter 10 of The Complete Lojban Language).
Note: FAhA cmavo indicate direction, but not motion toward that direction. There is a separate cmavo for that; see Lesson 7.

We can also combine time and space. For example, mi vipuzu gunka means I here-past-long-timedistance work, or I used to work here a long time ago. A common expression with ku is puzuvuku, meaning long ago and far awaya standard way to begin a fairy tale or legend!

Getting back to daily speech, these time and space cmavo are very useful for questions. ca ma is simultaneous with what?, or in other words, when? (a simpler alternative to tiu or die). Similarly, vi ma means at the location of what?, or where?

Exercise 4
Translate the following. 1. zdani do vi ma 2. la bil. puzavi zutse 3. le cipni puzineava vofli 4. la tcarlz.daruin. puva xabju 5. mi ba tavla nei le barja

More negativity

We have already seen na used to turn bridi into negative statements, of the type it is not true that. And we saw that this sometimes leads to slightly unexpected effects compared to English not. For instance, in Lesson 4 we saw that mi na nelci ro gerku means it is not true that I like all dogs (or I dont like all dogs). It does not mean I dont like any dogs.

na says not only that the sumti arent connected by that particular selbri, but that they arent necessarily connected by any selbri at all. So

It is not true that I talk to Susan. is just as valid a thing to say if Susan is a rock formation in the Pamir Mountains, as it is if she is a human being I know. Often, however, we need our negation to be a little less powerful. In particular, it

mi na tavla la suzyn.

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is useful to be able to say, not that the whole bridi is false, but only the selbri. This means that there is some relationship between the sumtibut this selbri isnt it.

The word used to negate just the selbri, and not the entire bridi, is nae. So if we say mi na nelci ro gerku, that could be true even if I have no feelings at all about the canine species. But with
mi nae nelci ro gerku

I other-than-like all dogs

on the other hand, there is something that can be said about me and all dogs; but its not that I like them. It isnt necessarily that I hate them: I might write poems about them, or prescribe medicine for them, or imitate them in polite company. But like them, I dont. If you do want to say you feel the opposite of like for all dogs, you can say
mi toe nelci ro gerku

I un-like (= dislike) all dogs.

toe turns a selbri into its opposite: toe nelci is pretty much the same thing as xebni hate. And if youre

indifferent, you can say

mi noe nelci ro gerku

I am neutral-as-to-liking all dogs.

noe indicates that youre neutral on the scale the selbri indicates.

Like time and space, Lojban places negation on a kind of scale, from lesser to greater extent. This shades of grey approach pervades the language; you will see it time and again in the grammar. It makes for an interesting contrast with the theoretical basis for the language, classical logicwhich is very much a black and white domain.

Exercise 5
Now that you have three new negative words, lets see if you can use them. Give Lojban equivalents for the following English words, given their Lojban opposites and the cmavo weve just learned. 1. disinterested (cinri: interested) 2. uninterested (cinri: interested) 3. bored (cinri: interested) 4. unborn (jbena: born) 5. uncover (gairgau: cover) 6. undead (morsi: dead) 7. non-Lojban (lojbo: Lojban(ic)) 8. un-Lojbanic (lojbo: Lojban(ic)) 9. plain (melbi: beautiful) 10. imaginary (fatci: factual, real)

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Summary

In this lesson we have covered the following: 1. The uses and usefulness of terminators. 2. Time cmavo: pu, ca, and ba. 3. Time intervals: zi, za and zu. 5. Location: vi, va, vu and buu.

4. Duration: zei, zea and zeu. 6. Direction: faa, too, zua (and so on). 7. Negation: nae, noe and toe.

There are many more cmavo to describe time and space (and a couple more for negation, for that matter), but they are only there if you need them. In fact, unless you want to be specific about time or space, you dont even need the ones in this lesson. Remember the golden rule of Lojban grammar: If you dont need it, dont use it! Lojban grammar is your servant, not your master.

Vocabulary
bevri culno kunti lebna pendo vanju zgana

x1 carries/hauls/bears/transports cargo x2 to x3 from x4 over path x5; x1 is a carrier/[porter] x1 is full/completely filled with x2 x1 [container] is empty/vacant of x2 [material]; x1 is hollow x1 takes/gets/gains/obtains/seizes/[removes] x2 (object/property) from x3 (possessor) x1 is/acts as a friend of/to x2 (experiencer); x2 befriends x1 x1 is made of/contains/is a quantity of wine from fruit/grapes x2 x1 observes/[notices]/watches/beholds x2 using senses/means x3 under conditions x4

Exercise 6
Translation exercises are not your master, either, but they are your business! Translate from Lojban; assume the story is happening in the here-and-now: 1. .i baza lenu la jan. cliva kei la suzyn. sanli nei vi le barja 2. .i caziku la suzyn. denpa lenu baziku la jan. viska la suzyn. 3. .i la suzyn. viska re lo kabri 4. .i goi pa lo pu culno .i goi pa lo ca culno 5. .i le puzi culno ca kunti ba lenu la jan. pinxe loi birje kei .ienai vau .ua 6. .i lenu pinxe loi dotco birje kei ku na se nelci ro lo prenu 7. .i la suzyn. zei tavla le bevri 8. .i ko lebna ta .i ko dunda lo cnino vanju botpi mi 9. .i .ei na dotco

Exercise 7
Translate into Lojban these (hopefully much less brain-squelching than the previous lessons) sentences:

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Chapter 6. Time and Space 1. A long time ago, Susan briefly lived at Zhangs. 2. Now Susan lives some way away from Zhang. 3. When Susan goes to the house, she goes a little to the left of the bar. 4. Every Thursday Susan goes to the bar, not far from the office. 5. At the bar Susan meets Susans long-time friends. 6. Susan notices that the beer is German by seeing the bottle label. (Hint: look carefully at the place structure of zgana.) 7. Susan sits away from the German beer.

Answers to exercises Exercise 1

1. With terminator: I described the number two to two friends. Without terminator: I described the number twentytwo to a friend. 2. With terminator: 1:30 was the time when I loved, on Friday. (la mumdjed. is the x3 of tcika) Without terminator: 1:30 was the time when I loved Friday. (la mumdjed. is the x2 of prami) 3. With terminator: The man observes the cat. Without terminator: The man observes the cat. (Yep, trick question. For an isolated sentence, the presence or absence of vau seldom makes any difference.) 4. With terminator: The mother of the infant travels. (Since ku indicates the sumti is over, the selbri can now begin.) Without terminator: The mother of the infant traveller. 5. With terminator: I request of Claudia that Maria speaks. (Claudia is the x3 of cpedu, the person to whom a request is made.) Without terminator: I request that Maria speaks to Claudia.

Exercise 2
1. puzaku la juLIET. klama la paris. 2. puzuku mi tcidu la kaMIL. 3. puziku la .iVAN. cliva le kumfa 4. bazi lenu la pi,ER. klama le kumfa kei la .iocikos. cinba la xorxes. 5. puziku la treisis. badri .i kui caku la maik. gleki

Exercise 3
1. mi bazei gunka 2. mi bazi gunka 3. mi puzuzea gunka 4. mi caza gunka (That was a tricky one...) 5. mi cazizea gunka (You could also argue for mi puzizea gunka. Whats actually being conveyed by Ive been working is something well be looking at more closely in Lesson 12.)

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Exercise 4
1. Where is your house? (Literally [something] is the house of you at what?) 2. Bill was sitting here a while ago. 3. The bird was just flying some distance by me. (Literally the bird flew a short time ago located next to here at a medium distance. This is not saying anything about the direction in which the bird was flying: FAhA on its own identifies location, not motion.) 4. Charles Darwin lived near here. (Note that we dont need zu to specify that he lived near here a long time ago: we assume that the person were talking to knows who Darwin was, and therfore knows that he lived over a century ago. In fact, you could even miss out the pu, but I left it in to avoid confusionmaybe my friend thinks Im talking about a different person with the same name, or that Im somehow speaking metaphorically about the spirit of Darwin.) 5. I will speak in the bar. (As you will have surmised, you dont need to follow FAhA words with cmavo like vi.)

Exercise 5
1. disinterested: noe cinri 2. uninterested: nae cinri (The distinction between disinterested and uninterested in English in slowly dying out which makes the word a pedants delight!) 3. bored: toe cinri 4. unborn: nae jbena (noe jbena would be someone in a twilight-zone between being born and not being born perhaps the baby at the moment it emerges from the womb. toe jbena is the opposite of being born; what that may mean, up to and including crawling back into the womb, or dying, is pretty much up to you. The English expression is actually more like not yet born, and we will find out how to say this in a few lessons time.) 5. uncover: toe gairgau (nae gairgau means simply not to cover, and noe gairgau to leave ajar.) 6. undead: noe morsi (nae morsi is someone alive, not a zombie. But dont worry too much about the phenomenology of the occult; just be comfortable in the knowledge that Lojban allows you to make these distinctions, if you want to.) 7. non-Lojban: nae lojbo (nae is frequently glossed as other than; this example may show you why.) 8. un-Lojbanic: toe lojbo (There is often something subjective about how things are opposites to each other; using an expression like this, you may well be asked to explain exactly how something can be the opposite of Lojban.) 9. plain: noe melbi (toe melbi would be ugly, of course.) 10. imaginary: nae facti (You can quibble about whether its not more like toe facti or noe facti. Thats why its just as well imaginary has its own gismu: xanri.)

Exercise 6
1. A while after Zhang left, Susan is standing in the bar. 2. Right now, Susan expects that Zhang will soon afterwards see Susan. 3. Susan sees two cups. 4. [She sees] one previously full one. [She sees] one currently full one. (Its amazing what can be tucked away in exercises. Yes, sumti can have tenses in Lojban. Theres no reason they cant: though theres an article in front of the gismu in le kabri, that gismu is still a selbri, and so it still expresses a relationship. This means that sumti have all the characteristics of selbri: they have sumti of their own (as well see

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Chapter 6. Time and Space later on); durations; locations; and tenses. This is an important way Lojban is different from many (though not all) natural languages: it has no essential grammatical difference between its nouns and verbs.) 5. The one full just a little time ago is now empty (aha!) after Zhang drank the beer (pah!). (Theres some mischief with terminators and attitudinals here. Attitudinals apply to the structure that precedes them. If they follow a sumti, they apply to that sumti. If they follow a selbri, they apply to that selbri. If they are at the start of a bridi, on the other hand, they apply to the whole bridi. Now, .ienai disapproval; Pah! follows kei, so it applies to the phrase closed off by that kei: that is, lenu la jan. pinxe loi birje kei. But .ua follows vau, so it applies to the whole phrase closed off by vau: namely, the entire bridi, le puzi culno ca kunti ba lenu la jan. pinxe loi birje.) 6. Drinking German beer is not liked by all people. (The terminators are the normal implied terminators for that particular structure. Of course, its much easier to say .i lenu pinxe loi dotco birje na se nelci ro lo prenu, without the kei ku; the na acts like cu, to block off the selbri from its preceding sumti.) 7. Susan briefly talks to the carrier. (See? A better word for waiter already. Notice, too, that you can specify a duration without specifying a tense.) 8. Take that away. Give me a new wine bottle. 9. It should not be German.

Exercise 7
1. .i puzuku la suzyn. zei xabju le la jan. zdani (You cant just say xabju la jan.you have to fill in the blank of Zhangs ___.) 2. .i la suzyn. ca xabju va la jan. 3. ca lenu la suzyn. klama le zdani kei la suzyn. klama zua vizi le barja (We dont really have a way for saying sheas youre probably painfully aware of by now. Take heartrelief is coming in the next lesson! Note that Susans route is away from the bar, but not explicitly moving to or from it; so we dont have to indicate motion along with direction. Not that we can right now, anyway.) 4. .i ca ro la vodjed. la suzyn. klama le barja va le briju 5. vi le barja la suzyn. penmi le la suzyn. zeu pendo (Remember, sumti take tenses and durations, too.) 6. .i la suzyn. zgana lenu le birje cu dotco kei lenu viska le botpi tcita (or: le tcita pe le botpi, or le le botpi ku tcitayou can feel really smug if you came up with that!) 7. .i la suzyn. zutse too le dotco birje

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Referring back

Chapter 7. Getting Personal: Pro-sumti and more abstractions

So far weve been referring to everybody by name, which can get very repetitive if you want to tell a story, or even string two sentences together (as you will have seen in the last few exercises.) Consider the following:
la suzyn. klama le barja .i la suzyn zea pinxe loi vanju .i la suzyn. zgana lo nanmu .i le nanmu cu melbi .i le nanmu cu zgana la suzyn.

Susan goes to the bar. Susan drinks some wine for a while. Susan notices [sees, observes] a man. The man is beautiful. The man notices Susan.
Note: Notice the use of melbiin English we usually describe men as handsome rather than beautiful, but this rather sexist distinction doesnt apply in Lojban. However, if you really wanted a Lojban word for handsome (beautifulkind-ofman) you could say melnau (melbi + nanmu).

It is pretty tedious to have to keep repeating Susan and man. English gets round this problem by using pronouns, like she or he. This works OK in this case, because we have one female and one male in the story so far, but it can get confusing when more characters enter the scene. (Its even more confusing with languages that only have one word for he, she and it, like Turkish or spoken Chinese.) Lojban, for its part, has pro-sumti, which are like pronounssort of.

In fact, weve already met some pro-sumti: mi and do, and the ti/ta/tu group; but we still dont have he/she/it, which are a bit more complicated. One way of dealing with this is a group of cmavo which refer back to something weve just said. In fact we have met one of these in a different context: goi. Just as goi on its own repeats the previous bridi, le goi repeats the first sumti of the previous bridi. (In this, it is behaving no differently to any other selbri with an article in front of it: le + selbri refers to the x1 of that selbri.) So we can rewrite the first three sentences as
la suzyn. klama le barja .i le goi zea pinxe loi vanju .i le goi cu zgana lo nanmu

The system breaks down here, though, since nanmu is not in the first, but the second place of the previous bridi. English doesnt bother with precision herehe just means some male person mentioned earlier. This works in the example here, because there is only one man in the story, but what about Bill saw Rick. He hit him. Did Bill hit Rick, or did Rick hit Bill? We dont know. Lojban does have other tricks up its sleeve, and as you might just have already guessed, le se goi will do the trick. But counting sumti from the preceding bridi isnt really a general solution.

Coming back to the man Susan saw, we can refer to him as ri, which means the most recent sumti. So we can say

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Chapter 7. Getting Personal .i le goi cu zgana lo nanmu .i ri melbi ri is one of a series, ri/ra/ru, meaning the most recent/fairly recent/distant sumti; but as far as Ive

noticed, ra and ru arent very popular in Lojbanistan at the moment. (Put it down to ideological reasons: they are deliberately vague, like their natural language counterparts, so they are regarded as somehow un-Lojbanic.) ri, on the other hand, is used a lot, since its very common for the last thing in one sentence to be the subject of the next sentence.
Tip: sumti are counted from their beginnings. So in a sentence like
lenu lo nanmu cu dotco kei cu se djuno ri ri refers to lo nanmu and not lenu lo nanmu cu dotco: the start of lo nanmu is closer to ri than the start of lenu lo nanmu cu dotco.

Tip: ri cannot refer to a sumti if it is already smack in the middle of that sumti. For example, in
la suzyn. pinxe le ri vanju ri obviously refers to la suzyn., and not to le vanju.

Another pro-sumti is da, which means someone/something. You may remember zoe, which means also means someone/something, but with zoe the something is unimportantits just a way of filling a sumti place. da, on the other hand, is important: it introduces something or someone we are directly talking about.
Note for logicians: da is the existential x, as in There exists some x such that x is ...

Coming back to our story, we could start by saying da klama le barjaSomeone came to the bar. Unlike the other pro-sumti weve been looking at, da does not point back to a sumti weve necessarily already seen. It does, however, point back to the same thing as any other da in any sentences conjoined with logical connectives, or more informally anywhere in the same paragraph. (No, we havent done Lojban logical connectives or paragraphs yet... Just keep this in mind for future reference.) So if I say da nanmu .i da klama le barja, you can typically assume Im referring to the same man in both sentences. Because they are all tied up with predicate logic, da and its companions de and di are used a lot for talking about languageyou see them frequently on the Lojban e-mail list, for example. By the way, there are no do and du in this series, because these already have other meanings: you and is the same thing as.

The two highlighted sumti in each of the following Lojban sentences refer to the same thing or person. For each, check whether the pro-sumti you have learnedlegoi, ri, racan replace the second sumti. 1. .i la suzyn. nelci loi vanju .i la suzyn. na nelci loi birje 2. .i la suzyn. viska lo nanmu .i le nanmu cu dotco 3. .i la suzyn. nelci lenu la suzyn. klama le barja 4. .i la suzyn. nelci le la suzyn. pendo 5. .i lenu la suzyn. badri cu nandu .i la suzyn. gleki

Exercise 1

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Chapter 7. Getting Personal 6. .i lenu la suzyn. badri cu nandu .i lenu la suzyn. badri na se zgana

Assigning pro-sumti

If were telling a story in English, the meaning of, say, she keeps changing. At the moment, it means Susan, but if Susans friend Jyoti walks into the bar, she could very well mean start meaning Jyoti. In Lojban, we can keep on using le goi, ri and their relatives, but there is an easier way of dealing with a larger cast of characters. What we do is assign pro-sumti as and when we need them, using the cmavo goi (which is like the Latin word sive, or the English also known as (aka)). The sumti assigned by goi are a series called KOhA, consisting of koa, koe, koi ... you get the idea?
Note for lawyers (and frustrated non-lawyers): The equivalent in legal documents of goi is henceforth referred to as, and koa is something like the party of the first part. Lojban has in fact been proposed as the ideal language for law, where precision is of utmost importance. It would also allow non-lawyers to understand legal documents, which would be something of a miracle.

OK, lets go back to Susans story. We start by saying

la suzyn. goi koa klama le barja

This means that from now on, every time we use koa, we mean Susan. The man she sees can then be koe, so we say
.i koa zgana lo nanmu goi koe

Now every time we use koe, it means that particular man, so the full story so far reads:
la suzyn. goi koa klama le barja .i koa zea pinxe loi vanju .i koa zgana lo nanmu goi koe .i koe melbi .i caku koe zgana koa

(Note how the cus have disappeared: koa, like mi, doesnt need them, since it cant join with a selbri to form a new selbri).

Assigning koe to lo nanmu is actually better than starting the next sentence with le nanmu. This is because le nanmu simply means the thing I have in mind which I call man, which is not exactly the same as the man (it could, in theory, be something totally different). Some Lojbanists might even say that using le like this is a bit malglico. (Or at least malrarbau damned natural languages: lots of languages have definite articles, and Lojban le is no definite article.)
Tip: If you combine koa/e/i/o/u with ri/ra/ru, dont count koa-type pro-sumti when youre counting back. For example
la suzyn. rinsa koe .i ri cisma

doesnt mean that koe (the man, in this context) smiles, but that Susan smiles. Why? Because it is pointless to have a replacing word (anaphor), like ri, replace another replacing word, like koe. If you wanted the x1 of cisma to be koe, you would have simply said .i koe cisma, not .i ri cisma. It works out simpler to keep ri/ra/ru in reserve for more important things.

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Lets continue by introducing Susans friend Jyoti (if people are wondering where I get all these unusual names from, Jyoti is an old Gujarati friend of mine). We continue ....
la djiotis. goi koi moinei klama .i koi rinsa koe

Jyoti (henceforth #3), goes into. #3 greets #2. Jyoti comes in and says hello to the guy.

moinei is another space tense. moi indicates movement; nei means inside (from the gismu, nenri). So moinei corresponds to the English preposition into (while nei on its own corresponds to inside or in.) The way Lojban grammar works, moinei on its own is treated as moinei ku: a sumti tcita with an omitted sumti. (Remember caku, which is exactly the same. Just as baku means afterwards (relative to

the here-and-now), moinei [ku] means something like in(to)wardsbut is nowhere near as weird in Lojban as it is in English.)
moi is extremely useful, as it allows you to distinguish between location and motion. For example, I

ran behind the bar in English is properly speaking ambiguous: are you running while behind the bar, or are you running with your final destination behind the bar? Lojban does not allow that ambiguity: mi bajra tia le barja means the former, while mi bajra moi tia le barja means the latter. In the example given above, nei klama would mean not that Jyoti comes in (from outside), but that she is going from somewhere to somewhere else, while inside. This kind of ambiguity may pass unnoticed by native English speakers, but speakers of languages which are more precise about direction find it extremely vague (Turkish, for example, has at least three words to translate here).

Vocabulary
.e catlu

xanka

rinsa

x1 looks at/examines/views/inspects/regards/watches/gazes at x2 [compare with zgani] and (individuals, as opposed to joi.) Stay tuned for a proper explanation of these words in a couple of lessons. x1 (agent) greets/hails/[welcomes/says hello to]/responds to arrival of x2 in manner x3 (action) x1 is nervous/anxious about x2 (abstraction) under conditions x3

Translate the following. Assume the same values for koa/e/i that we have been using so far (i.e. koa is Susan, and so on). 1. .i koa ca rinsa koi 2. .i koa .e koi xanka cmila 3. .i caku le goi cu catlu koe 4. .i koe cadzu moi zua koi 5. .i koe djica lenu djuno fi le koa cmene

Exercise 2

Acronyms

Now there are plenty of KOhA sumti to go around. In fact, if youve run out of words by getting to kou, you can start over again with foa, foe ... fou. There is a problem, though: you have to remember (a) which sumti was assigned to which KOhA word, and (b) to assign the sumti in the first place. Theres nothing to say that this will not become commonplace in future Lojban usage. Right now,

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however, there is a feeling that this is a little too calculated to work spontaneously. And Lojban cannot readily use the little hints natural languages pepper their grammar with (like gender and number), to keep track of who is who. As a result, yet another strategy has been introduced to refer back to sumti. This strategy dates back from Institute Loglan, before Lojban arose in its modern form. (Yes, Lojban has a history and a prehistory. No, we dont really have the time to go into them here.) The strategy involves acronyms. Simply put, if you see a Lojban letter being used as a sumti, you take it as referring to the last sumti whose selbri starts with that letter. So in
la suzyn. cusku lu coi liu lo nanmu .i ny. cisma

Susan says Hello to a man. The man smiles

ny. stands for nanmu. There is no need to explicitly assign ny. with goi; but you can, and indeed if you

assign it to a sumti which doesnt start with that letter, then that assignment will be the one that counts (A certain Lojbanist, lets call him N, dislikes KOhA cmavo...). Some Lojbanists dislike this usage because it, too, seems a little calculated (and initials and acronyms have decidedly non-literary associations in most natural languages!) Only time will tell which of the two usages will become more commonplace.

Direct quotations

You may have noticed two other new words in the previous Lojban sentence. lu and liu are like quote and unquotethey put something someone says into a sumti. liu is one of the few terminators that can almost never be missed out, since that would make everything else that follows part of the quotation. You can also nest quotations, e.g.
la ranjit. pu cusku lu la djiotis. pu cusku lu coi liu mi liu

Ranjeet said Jyoti said Hello to me.

which is similar to
la ranjit. pu cusku lu la djiotis. pu rinsa mi liu

Ranjeet said Jyoti greeted me.

Being a logical language, Lojban is very careful to distinguish between words for things, and the things themselves. So you cant speak about the phrase le munje the universe in the same way you speak about the universe itself. To give a silly example, the phrase le munje is small, but the universe itself is not. To distinguish between the two in Lojban, you need to use quotation:
lu le munje liu cu cmalu

The universe is small

le munje na cmalu

The universe is not small

Tip: lu... liu is intended to quote grammatical pieces of Lojbanideally, entire sentences, rather than individual words. For smaller chunks of Lojban, which do not necessary make sense in isolation, the proper quotation words are instead lou... leu, the error quotes. For example, ro le mi pendo cu klama makes sense in Lojban as a sentence, and can be enclosed in lu... liu. But if you want to say what goes

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Chapter 7. Getting Personal before pendo in the sentence, ro le mi does not make that much sense on its own. So you would quote that sentence fragment, not as lu ro le mi liu, but as lou ro le mi leu.

Vocabulary
fengu

x1 is angry/mad at x2 for x3 (action/state/property)

Translate the following. Continue to assume the same values for koa/e/i that we have been using so far. Note: doi is used to show who youre talking to (without doi, the cmene might become the first sumti of the bridi). Its a bit like English O (as in O ye of little faith) or the Latin vocative (as in Et tu, Brute.) 1. .i koe cusku lu doi djiotis. ma cmene le do pendo liu 2. .i koi cusku lu lu suzyn. liu liu 3. .i koe cusku lu .ui ro lo do pendo cu pendo mi liu 4. .i koi fengu cusku lu djica ma liu koi

Exercise 3

Indirect quotations

A phrase like Ranjeet said Jyoti said Hello to me. can also be expressed in a rather more subtle way:
la ranjit. pu cusku le seduu la djiotis. pu rinsa ry.

Ranjeet past-express the-predicate Jyoti past-greet R Ranjeet said that Jyoti greeted him.

What is this seduu? Well, to explain that, we have to go via duu.

duu is a tricky but very useful cmavo meaning, in logical terms, the proposition. What this means in

ordinary language is something like the notion that x is true. Sorry, that wasnt really ordinary language. The closest equivalent in English is that, as in Ranjeet knows that ..., or Ranjeet thinks that .... Heres an example of duu used on its own:
la suzyn. na djuno le duu la jan. cinynei ra

Susan doesnt know that Zhang fancies (sexually-likes) her.

duu belongs to selmao (= se cmavo) NU, just like nu itself. This means you can use it grammatically

wherever you use nu. In fact, duu and nu are the two major kinds of abstractions in Lojban. Lojban can distinguish between abstractions pretty finely, but the main distinction is between things that can happen (events), which take nu, and things you can know (facts), which take duu. The gismu definition usually tells you which abstraction type is normal for the word.
Note: By the way, most of the instances of nu in the final exercises of Lesson 5 and 6 should have been duu. Sorry about the over-simplificationand please dont repeat it in your own Lojban from now on!

OK, but why is what Ranjeet said introduced with seduu rather than duu? Basically, because Lojban is a stickler for details. What you know or remember or believe is a fact: something you hold inside your brain. What you say, however, is not something you hold inside your brain; instead, it is sounds which

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mean what you hold inside your brain. The distinction is subtle, but it is the kind of distinction Lojban insists on. (Thats why its a logical language, after all.) When you want to refer to something you say rather than something you think, Lojban uses seduu rather than duu.
Note: The se in seduu is what you think it is. Ill explain what its doing there next lesson. Note: A jargon word you will occasionally see in talk about Lojban is reification. Dont be scared off: this piece of jargon actually helps! Reification is Latin for taking something, and turning it into an object, a thing. Its what it turns out both duu and seduu do. These words take what was an event, an occurrence in the physical world, and turns it into a single object, a thing, which you can think, which you can discover, or which you can use in logic. (Or, in the case of seduu, which you can say.)

So Lojban has different words for that..., depending on what sort of thing is meant.

If that introduces something that happened, use nu. (Events can be subdivided more finely yet, but for now lets not complicate matters even more than necessary.) If that introduces something that you think, use duu. If that introduces something that you say, use seduu

unless it is a literal quote, in which case you use lu ... liu.

Tip: This insistence on detailwhich can get even more involved for NU cmavois quite useful; but it seems to contradict what the previous lesson claimed, that Lojban grammar is your servant, not your master. It is an error to say nu when you mean duuthough you will find it is a rather frequent error. But Lojban does allow you to embed bridi inside other bridi as abstractions, without specifying whether they are events, facts, utterances, qualities, or whatever. The magic cmavo to use in that case is suu. So you can correctly say all three of:
mi nelci lesuu mi dotco mi djuno lesuu mi dotco mi cusku lesuu mi dotco

Admittedly, suu has not been much used to date; it is a fairly late addition to the language (as is duu!), and people havent got used to it yet. But if you cant be bothered specifying what kind of abstraction youre using, thats the word to use.

Which of nu, duu or seduu would you use to translate that in the folowing sentences? 1. I claimed that Lojban is easy. 2. I am frustrated that Lojban is easy. 3. I agree that Lojban is easy. 4. It is confusing that Lojban is easy. 5. It was decided that Lojban should be easy.

Exercise 4

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Some more personal pro-sumti

Weve already seen two personal pro-sumti, mi and do, meaning I (or me) and you. However, you in English can mean four different things: 1. The one person Im talking to. 2. A number of people Im talking to.

3. The person or people Im talking to and some other person or people. 4. Anyone (as in Money cant buy you love.)

Lojban gets round the confusion between (1) and (2) by using numbers. The most common way to express (2) is rodo, all of you (or Southern U.S. Yall) and, as weve seen, coi rodo is Hello alla common way to start an e-mail to a list. You can also use specific numbers: redo would mean two of you or you two (for example, I start e-mails to my parents with coi redo.)
Tip: To say the two of you, Lojban does actually let you say le re do. But you need the numeral to be there already, in order to put an article in front of a pro-sumti: you cant say le do to mean you.

You can also use numbers with ko, e.g. ro ko klama ti All of you, get over here.

Case (3) is expressed by doo you and someone else. Case (4) is completely different: its normally expressed by roda all x or, more specifically ro le prenu all persons, but often you can just miss it out altogether.

English we is almost as confusing, as it can mean the speaker and the listener(s), the speaker and some other people, or the speaker and the listener and some other people. Not surprisingly, Lojban has four distinct pro-sumti for we:
mio mia

maa

you and I (but no-one else) I and another/others (but not you) you and I and another/others

(Once again, Lojban follows the lead of languages other than English in differentiating between these different kinds of we.)

The fourth pro-sumti? Oddly enough, its mi! Lojban makes no distinction bewteen singular and plural; so if several people are speaking all together, mi (which refers to the one or more speakers) is perfectly correct for we. In practice, youll usually get mi used like that when one person is presuming to speak (or more often, to write) on behalf of others. Some examples:
mi prami do

I love you.

mia penmi do tiu la cicac. maa remna

Well meet you at three oclock.

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We are all human.

mi djica lenu do cliva

We want you to go away.

Is we/us in the following mio, mia, maa, or mi? 1. We need to start seeing other people.

Exercise 5

2. We the people hold these truths to be self-evident. 3. We decided to expel you from the association. 4. You cant talk to us that way! 5. Were in a fine mess, all of us, arent we? 6. They told us we should get married, and you said OK. 7. They told us we should get married, and he said OK.

Summary

In this chapter, we have covered the following topics: How to refer back to previous sumti, using the previous bridi (le goi), counting sumti (ri, ra, ru), assigning pro-sumti (koakou, foafou), and using acronyms (Lojban letters). How to refer to existential x (something, someone) (da, de, di). Referring to motion in Lojban (moi). How to give direct quotations (lu ... liu).

How to give indirect quotations (se duu).

How to refer to facts (duu) as distinct from events (nu).

Lojbans complement of first and second person pro-sumti (doo, mio, mia, maa).

Vocabulary
bebna cinri burna

dansydiu .eu mutce nia ninpei pei penmi simlu simxu .y.

x1 is foolish/silly in event/action/property [folly] (ka) x2; x1 is a boob x1 is embarrassed/disconcerted/flustered/ill-at-ease about/under conditions x2 (abstraction) x1 (abstraction) interests/is interesting to x2; x2 is interested in x1 disco [dansu (dance) + dinju (building)] I suggest (attitudinal) x1 is much/extreme in property x2 (ka), towards x3 extreme/direction; x1 is, in x2, very x3 down, below (space tense) meet for the first time [cnino (new) + penmi (meet)] I think (opinion attitudinal) x1 meets/encounters x2 at/in location x3 x1 seems/appears to have property(ies) x2 to observer x3 under conditions x4 x1 (set) has members who mutually/reciprocally x2 er (hesitation)

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The story is now on in earnest! For each of the highlighted pro-sumti, say who or what they mean. (Oh, and translate the sentences, too.) Note: ka is like nu, but while nu describes a state or event, ka describes a property or quality.
soi voa means and vice versa. simxu does pretty much the same thing, as a gismu. Well be looking at both next lesson.

Exercise 6

1. .i koa burna 2. .i koa catlu le la cardoNES. kabri 3. .i lenu zgana ra cu simlu leka cinri koa 4. .i koe cinba koi soi voa 5. .i koi cusku lu pei redo puzi simxu ninpei liu 6. .i le vanju pe nia cu simlu leka mutce cinri 7. .i koa sutra pinxe le goi 8. .i koe cusku lu .y. na goi 9. .i mi puzea na penmi ti soi voa liu 10. .i baziku koa cmila 11. .i koa cusku lu .ui redo bebna 12. .i .eu maa klama lo dansydiu

Vocabulary
bilga dunku cismyfra

jinvi

gusta

kansa morji preti

xumske

spuda

x1 is bound/obliged to/has the duty to do/be x2 in/by standard/agreement x3; x1 must do x2 x1 reacts/responds/answers by smiling to stimulus x2 under conditions x3 [cisma (smile) + frati (react)] x1 is anguished/distressed/emotionally wrought/stressed by x2 x1 is a restaurant/cafe/diner serving type-of-food x2 to audience x3 x1 thinks/opines x2 [opinion] (duu) is true about subject/issue x3 on grounds x4 x1 is with/accompanies/is a companion of x2, in state/condition/enterprise x3 (event/state) x1 remembers/recalls/recollects fact(s)/memory x2 (duu) about subject x3 x1 (quoted text) is a question/query about subject x2 by questioner x3 to audience x4 x1 answers/replies to/responds to person/object/event/situation/stimulus x2 with response x3 chemistry [xukmi (chemical) + saske (science)]

Translate into Lojban. Use Lojban letters (acronyms) for the characters to refer to each other. Do not use liu to close quotations opened with lu at the end of each sentence, but only when the speaker actually stops speaking. 1. Jyoti asked Susan, Wheres Zhang? (Hint: just use preti.) 2. Susan answered He said that he would wait for me to come. (Hint: just use spuda, and skip x2.) 3. Jyoti said, Im not that worried about him leaving. I think that hell meet us at the disco. (Use a gismu instead of an attitudinal for I think.) 4. He has to read for a while. 5. Hes forgotten a lot of chemistry in the summer. (Hint: hes actually forgotten many things about chemistry.)

Exercise 7

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Chapter 7. Getting Personal 6. Were going to a restaurant before going to the disco. 7. Do you want to accompany us? 8. Sure, said Susan, as she smiled at Ranjeet. (Hint: as = at the same time as.)

Answers to Exercises Exercise 1

1. le goi: Yes. ri: No. (ri would be loi vanju.) ra: Yes. 2. le goi: No. ri: Yes. ra: No. (Strictly speaking, if ri is not used in a sentence, ra can refer to the immediately preceding sumti; but that would be needlessly misleading.) 3. le goi: No. (goi refers back to the previous sentencewhich is why it can answer a yes/no-questionand not to a bridi in the same sentence.) ri: Yes. ra: No. 4. le goi: No. (Once again, theres no previous sentence for it to refer to.) ri: Yes. (ri counts only completed sumti, and le ri pendo is not yet complete when you count back from ri to the le immediately in front of it.) ra: No.

5. le goi: No. (The x1 of the preceding sentence is not la suzyn. but lenu la suzyn. badri.) ri: Yes. (See discussion.) ra: No. 6. le goi: Yes. ri: No. ra: Yes. (lenu la suzyn. badri is the second sumti counting backwards from the start of the sentence.)

Exercise 2
1. Susan greets Jyoti. 2. They laugh nervously. 3. Now, they look at the man. (le goi means that the people doing the laughing are the same as the people doing the lookingboth of them.) 4. He walks towards the left of Jyoti. (Without the moi, this would mean He walks at the left of Jyoti.) 5. He wants to know (about) her name. (Thats Susans name, not Jyotisthough in English youd assume Jyoti, since she is the most recently named female. Pro-sumti like koa arent affected by what candidate referent has been mentioned most recently: they have a unique referent that stays constant.) In order to get this into understandable English, weve had to change some of the pro-sumti back into names. We could also make the translation sound more natural by changing the word order a bit more, and maybe putting the whole thing into the past tense.

Exercise 3
1. He says Jyoti, what is the name of your friend? (This is actually the simplest way of saying Whos your friend?; le do pendo cu mo is closer to Whats your friend?, as in What does your friend do? or What is your friend like?) 2. She says Susan. (Note the characteristic, Lewis-Carrollesque Lojban pedantry here. Susan, the young woman with an irrational fear of German alcoholic beverages, is not Susans name. The word Susan is Susans name. So Jyoti cannot answer la suzyn., meaning la suzyn. cu cmene le mi pendo, but lu suzyn. liu, meaning lu suzyn. liu cu cmene le mi pendo. Since were putting everything Jyoti says inside our own quotes, this makes her answer be lu lu suzyn. liu liu.)

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Chapter 7. Getting Personal 3. He says Delightedany friend of yours is a friend of mine. (Remember, Lojban selbri can be used in both bridi and sumti: pendo means both a friend, with an article in front of it, and is a friend, as an independent selbri.) 4. Jyoti says to herself angrily What does he want? (Because it is in direct quotation, the question is Jyotis, not the narrators, obviously: this does not mean What was it that Jyoti said to herself he wanted?)

Exercise 4
1. seduu, in the usual usage of claim as make a statement. Lojban gives duu for xusra assert, claim, but that points to the more logic-specific sense of claim that something is true. 2. nu. It is events in the world, rather than concepts, which usually provoke emotional responses. If duu represents something you hold in your brain, then nu, not duu, is necessary after frustrated: your emotional response is too much of a reflex action for your perception to have the time to become something you hold in your brain! 3. duu: agreement is a response you have to a concept; this concept has not necessarily been put in words, nor are you necessarily putting it in words yourself. 4. nu. Confusion is an emotional response, just like frustration, and primarily involves events in the world, rather than rational facts. (If theyre confusing, of course, theyre probably not all that rational in the first place.) 5. duu: decisions are things you hold in your brain, before you either put them into words, or into action.

Exercise 5
1. mio 2. mi (Classic case of someone speaking on behalf of the many, by the way.) 3. mia, although this could be mi if the expeller is speaking institutionally, on behalf of the association. 4. mia 5. maa 6. mio 7. mia

Exercise 6
pro-sumti
ra le la cardoNES. kabri (It cant be lenu zgana ri kei, because the lenu-sumti isnt finished yetand that interpretation would be as weirdly self-referential as any Escher drawing. Not that Lojban isnt perfectly capable of such mischief! But we couldnt refer back to le la cardoNES. kabri with ri, either: the way sumti are counted by their beginnings, the immediately previous sumti is not le la cardoNES. kabriits the la cardoNES. inside the phrase le la cardoNES. kabri! This kind of annoyance may give you a hint about why ri is not as popular as you might think...) la suzyn. .e la ranjit.: You two. le vanju la suzyn. ce la ranjit. puzi simxu ninpei. Dont worry about how you said Susan and Ranjeetits not like weve covered ce anyway! (For the record, it makes a set out of Susan and Ranjeet, since a set is what simxu looks for. See Lesson 14.) goi here refers back not to the previous sentence in the story, but to the previous sentence in the con-

redo le goi goi

mi

versation. Obviously Ranjeet wouldnt be referring back to sentences written by the narrator. Hes not meant to realise hes fictional, after all. la ranjit. (Just checking if youre awake...)

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ti maa la suzyn. (By elimination; but strictly speaking ti could be anyone or anything Ranjeet happens to be

pointing to.)

la suzyn. .e la ranjit. .e la djiotis.

Translation 1. Susan felt embarrassed. 2. She looked at the chardonnay glass. (As specified in Lesson 3, le la cardoNES. kabri does not mean that the Chardonnay owns the glassmerely that it is associated with it: it corresponds to le kabri pe la cardoNES.) 3. She seems to find observing it very interesting. (In Lojban, things and people arent interesting by themselves; only their properties or activities can be interesting. There is a workaround, which is something like some property about the glass I wont bother specifying is interesting. Well cover this towards the end of the course.) 4. Ranjeet and Jyoti kissed each other. (Literally, Ranjeet kissed Jyoti and vice versa.) 5. I think you two have just [mutually] met, she said. (In Lojban, you cant say two people meet. You can only say Person A meets person B, and, optionally, vice versasoi voa. But you can use simxu mutually to get the two sumti involved into the one sumti place.) Note: Seasoned Lojbanists will have noticed that this sentence is not strictly correct, and that it would have been rather better as lui redo puzi ninpei simxu, or lui redo puzi simxu leka ceu ninpei ceu. Seasoned Lojbanists will also cut me some slack for not trying to introduce everything at once... 6. The wine below seemed to be incredibly interesting. (Literally, The wine associated with below.... Strictly speaking, this does not mean the wine below Susan, but the wine below the speaker; but we wont insist on that point for now.) 7. She drank it quickly. 8. Errr, no, said Ranjeet. 9. Weve never met [each other]. (Literally Ive never met this person, and vice versa, which sounds even more awkward.) 10. A little later, Susan laughed. 11. Come on, youre both being silly, she said. 12. Lets go to the disco.

Exercise 7
You now know enough Lojban that your translations can vary to some extent. Dont be too concerned about matching these translations to the letter. 1. .i lu jy. zvati ma liu preti fi la djiotis. la suzyn. or .i lu jy. zvati ma liu preti zoe la djiotis. la suzyn. 2. .i la suzyn. spuda fi lu jy. cusku leseduu jy. denpa lenu mi klama liu (And no, its unlikely that Susan would refer to herself as sy.!) 3. .i la djiotis. cusku lu mi noe dunku lenu jy. cliva .i mi jinvi leduu jy. penmi maa vi le dansydiu (We translate us as maa rather than mio, because presumably it refers to Ranjeet as well as Jyoti and Susan.) 4. .i jy. bilga lenu zea tcidu 5. .i jy. toe morji soe da le xumske ca le crisa (You could also say soe lo fatci instead of soe da.) 6. .i mia klama lo gusta pu lenu klama le dansydiu 7. .i xu do djica lenu do kansa mia liu (We put liu here, because this is where Jyotis quotation ends.)

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Chapter 7. Getting Personal 8. .i la suzyn. cusku lu goi liu ca lenu sy. cismyfra la ranjit. (or: ra cismyfra or koa cismyfra. Not ri cismyfra, though: ri here is lu goi liu! Infuriating but true...)

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Chapter 8. Swapping things round: conversion and simple lujvo

selbri conversions
Conversion is swapping the places of a bridi around. We have already encountered one case of conversion: the cmavo, se, which changes round the first and second places of a bridi. For example
la djiotis. cinba la ranjit.

Jyoti kisses Ranjeet.

is the same as
la ranjit. se cinba la djiotis.

Ranjeet is kissed by Jyoti.

se is part of a series of cmavo which go, in alphabetical order, se, te, ve, xe. Like a lot of these series, the

first one is used a lot more than the others, but sometimes the others are useful.

Just as se changes round the first and second places, te changes round the first and third places, ve, the first and fourth, and xe, the first and fifth.
ti bakfu loi tirse grana loi skori

This is-a-bundle-of iron rods held together with string.

loi skori cu te bakfu loi tirse grana ti

String holds the bundle of iron rods together (literally, with string are bundled iron rods.)

The ti has now moved to a less conspicuous place in the sentence, and so can now be dropped out without being missed. In fact place conversion is often used when we want to get rid of places like this.

mia tugni do zoe le dinske mia tugni do fo le dinske le dinske cu ve tugni

We agree with you [that something is true] about economics. As regards economics [we] agree [with you].

le prenu cu klama zoe zoe zoe lo trene le prenu cu klama fu lo trene lo trene cu xe klama

The person goes somewhere, from somewhere, via somewhere, by train.

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[Someone] goes by train. (literally By a train is gone) A train is a vehicle. As Ive said, the more extreme conversions like ve and xe are rarely used, partly because most gismu only have two or three places, and partly because even with four- or five-place gismu, the less-used places are what come towards the end.

Vocabulary
gugde jdini jamna xatra

xlura

x1 is the country of peoples x2 with land/territory x3; (people/territory relationship) x1 (person/mass) wars against x2 over territory/matter x3; x1 is at war with x2 x1 is money/currency issued by x2; (adjective:) x1 is financial/monetary/pecuniary/fiscal x1 is a letter/missive/[note] to intended audience x2 from author/originator x3 with content x4 x1 (agent) influences/lures/tempts x2 into action/state x3 by influence/threat/lure x4

Convert the following sentences so that the highlighted sumti comes first. Miss out any unimportant places. 1. zoe fengu lenu jamna 2. ti xatra mi la jan. 3. zoe xlura mi lenu cliva le gugde kei loi jdini 4. lo prenu cu tavla zoe zoe la lojban. 5. lo prenu cu dunda le cukta mi

Exercise 1

sumti conversions

Another thing we can do is to use conversion cmavo to make sumti. We saw how Lojban articles turn selbri into sumti, so that, for example, lo mlatu means something(s) which could fit in the first place of mlatuin other words, lo changes is-a-cat to a cat. The same is true for le mlatu except that, as weve seen, it is something which the speaker has in mind as occupying x1 of mlatuin other words, the cat. This works fine if the only place we want to access and turn into a sumti is x1; but with other gismu we
lo prenu cu dunda le cukta mi lo prenu can also be le dunda the giver; but what about the sumti describing mi and le cukta? Well, you

may want to make sumti out of other places. Lets look at the last example from the previous exercise:

probably guessed. The answer you gave to the exercise was (I hope)
mi te dunda le cukta

This means that mi can be le te dunda the recipient. In the same way, le cukta can be le se dunda the gift or the thing given. So if we want to make a really obvious sentence, we can say
le dunda cu dunda le se dunda le te dunda

The giver gives the given-thing to the person-to-whom-it-is-given

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The donor gives the gift to the recipient.

Note: gift here is anything given without payment or exchangeit doesnt need to have the special present associations of the English word.)

These conversions apply not only to gismu, but to any word acting as a selbri. Remember goi, for example, which stands in for the preceding sentences bridi. Just as we did with dunda, we can construct a bridi like
le goi cu goi le se goi le te goi le ve goi le xe goi

On its own, this sentence doesnt mean terribly much; it just repeats the previous sentence. But the trick is, this version of the sentence repeats the previous sentence, with its sumti appearing explicitly. This is how we can refer back to sumti in the previous sentence in general. For example,
.i la suzyn. zgana lo nanmu goi koa .i koa melbi

can also be expressed as

.i la suzyn. zgana lo nanmu .i le se goi cu melbi

Thats because le se goi refers to the second place (x2) of the preceding bridi, which is lo nanmu. (There are even ways to refer back to sumti introduced by sumti tcita; but thats an advanced topic.) Even some abstraction cmavo can be modified by se. For example, duu, which can be used to form a selbri, has two sumti: x1, the thought described, and x2, the words used to express it:
le la jan. se pensi cu {duu ri nelci la suzyn. kei} lu do dirba mi liu

Zhangs thing-thought (= what Zhang thought) is {the thought that he likes Susan}, put into the words You are dear to me.

Thats why le se duu refers to words rather than thoughts.

Come up with sumti for the following concepts, using the following gismu:
ciska cmene cpedu fanva klama penmi skicu spuda

Exercise 2

1. the destination 2. the route 3. the namer 4. the translation 5. the translator

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Chapter 8. Swapping things round 6. the request 7. the meeting place 8. the writing implement 9. the description 10. the response

lujvo
Weve already seen quite a few lujvo, or compound words, in the exercises; but we havent actually made any of our own yet. Lojban has strict rules for making lujvo; you cant just crunch words together like English brunch or edutainment, because this might result in a word which sounds like something else, falls apart or makes intelligent computers repeat Does not compute in a tinny voice and blow up in a cloud of blue smoke. However, one safe way of making acceptable lujvo is by using the conversion cmavo weve just looked at.

se dunda, as weve seen, means is given (by someone, to someone). We can turn this into a lujvo simply adding l to the se, to give seldunda. The new word comes complete with its own place-structurewhich

is, of course, the same as that of se dunda: x1 is a gift from x2 to x3

If we want to say the gift, le seldunda is not really an improvement on le se dunda. However, most gismu have short combining forms (rafsi). These are never used on their own, only in lujvo. As it happens, dunda has two short forms: dud and dua. We cant use dud, because that would give us a word ending in a consonant, and, as we know, only cmene can end in a consonant. (Some cmene do in fact use them for that reason.) The only candidate, then, is dua, so the gift is le seldua. (seldua has exactly the same place structure as seldunda.) The same is true for the other conversion cmavo, though their corresponding rafsi dont all follow the same pattern:
se te ve xe seltervelxel-

So the recipient is le terdua.

Note: You might wonder whether stela lock was really important enough to have wrested the rafsi telaway from tegiven that xel-, after all, was successfully wrested away from xelso Greek. The answer is, probably not; but after the Great rafsi Reallocation of 1993, its really too late to do anything about it now. Consider it an endearing quirk of the language...

In this way you can expand on the gismu list dramatically, to give equivalents of common English words which are not included and, more interestingly, words which dont have equivalents in English. A lot of these are words you would probably never want to say, like ternae x1 is the rule/logic by which proposition x2 contradicts/denies/refutes/negates proposition x3. However, you sometimes find

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interesting and/or useful words which dont exist as single words in English. Here are a few of my own creations:
lo tertcu lo ternue lo selvue lo seltea lo selcta lo seltai lo veltui

lo selzie lo selxei lo selpai

a purpose/activity for which something is needed (from nitcu need) a person to whom a promise is made (from nupre promise) a moral standard (from vrude be virtuous) a scary thing (from terpa fear) something/someone that is looked at (from catlu look, examine) something which wears you out (from tatpi be tired/fatigued) an area of agreement (from tugni agree with) something you are free to do (from zifre be free) an object of hate (from xebni hate) an object of devotion (from prami love, be devoted to)

This method will always give you an acceptable lujvoexcept in one case. Lojban does not allow double consonants, because they are difficult to pronounce, and can be heard incorrectly as one consonant. This means that we cant have lujvo like vellui (cleansing agent, from the x4 of lumci wash). The way out of this problem is to put y between the two ls, giving us velylui. In fact, if you see y in a Lojban word, it cannot be a gismu or a cmavo (with two exceptions weve already seen: .y. er... and letters of the alphabet like .yy. and dy.) Such a word can only be either a lujvo or a name (cmene). y was purposefully avoided in normal Lojban words.

Warning

Negative lujvo

Just as se has the combining form sel, the negative nae has the combining form nal, and we can use this to make lujvo in exactly the same way.
Note: na has its own rafsi, nar; but nae is more useful in creating new words. nae in a selbri still indicates an existing kind of relationship, which you would want to describe with a single lujvo; while na could mean anything, including non-existencemaking it too broad a concept for most uses.

For example, jdice means decide and has the short combining form jdi. naljdi therefore means not decide or be indecisive. Some other examples:
lo naljmi lo naljvi lo nalkri

lo nalylae lo nalrea

one who does not understand (from jimpe understand) a non-competitor (from jivna compete) a non-believer/skeptic (from krici believe) an unlikely event (from lakne be likely) a non-human (from remna be human)

We can see that nal is like the English non-, but we need to remember that non- sometimes has other meanings or associations that nal does not have. lo naljvi is simply someone who is not taking part in a competition, not a non-contender in the sense of someone who competes but doesnt stand a chance of winning. Similarly lo nalrea is someone who is not a member of the species homo sapiens (e.g. a chimpanzee or Klingon), and cannot be applied to someone who is inhumane or perceived as subhuman in some way.

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We can also use nal with sel and its relatives; for example,
lo naltertcu

not a purpose/activity for which something is needed; something which has no requirements (from nitcu x1 needs/requires/is dependent on/[wants] necessity x2 for purpose/action/stage of process x3) an area of disagreement; a controversial issue (from tugni x1 [person] agrees with person(s)/position/side x2 that x3 (duu) is true about matter x4) (event/state) under conditions x3) something you are not free to do (from zifre x1 is free/at liberty to do/be x2 something you are unaware of (from sanji x1 is conscious/aware of x2 (ob-

lo nalveltui lo nalselzie lo nalselsanji

lo nalselsei

short combining form) someone who lacks a self/ego; an enlightened person according to Hindu/Buddhist philosophy (from sevzi x1 is a self/ego/id/identity-image of x2)

ject/abstract); x1 discerns/recognizes x2 (object/abstract); this gismu has no suitable

As youll have guessed, the companions of nae, namely toe and noe, have rafsi of their own: tol- and nor-, respectively. So disinterested, uninterested and bored in Lojban are norselcii, nalselcii and tolselcii.
lujvo can be much more interesting than this; interesting enough, in fact, that we wont be covering

them any further here. You can make lujvo out of pretty much any tanru you can devise; this is the main way to introduce new words into Lojban. But to make the lujvo you come up with work, you need some background knowledge:

how to make sure rafsi in a word stick together unambiguously in Lojban grammar (The Complete Lojban Language, Chapter 4.54.6, 4.104.12.)

how to make sure the gismu inside your tanru group together properly (The Complete Lojban Language, Chapter 5.) how to derive the place structure of the lujvo from the place structures of the gismu that make it up (The Complete Lojban Language, Chapter 12.)

Its worth your while to look into these issues if youll be using the language seriously, and especially if youll be writing in it. (lujvo are easier to deal with while writing than while speaking, because you have the time to reflect on how youll be creating your new word.) At this stage, though, you dont need to go into all that just yet.

If you have access to a gismu list, use it to look up gismu and make lujvo meaning the following, using short combining forms where possible and nal- where necessary. 1. a television 2. a subject of conversation 3. someone who is deceived or cheated 4. an immoral or amoral (not virtuous) person 5. a railroad

Exercise 3

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Chapter 8. Swapping things round 6. an insignificant event 7. something unseen 8. something about which you have no feelings/emotions

Reflexives and reciprocals

Lets now look at a slightly embellished version of the plot-advancing example sentence from Lesson 7, involving Zhang and Susan:
la suzyn. na djuno fi voa fe le duu la jan. cinynei sy.

Susan doesnt know about herself that Zhang fancies (sexually-likes) her.

We have snuck into the sentence a new pro-sumti: voa. This means the first sumti of this bridi, and like the others, comes in a seriesvoe refers to the second sumti, voi to the third and so on. In practice, voa is used quite a lot, while the others are rarer; but that could be because people still tend to think in terms of natural languages, where only the equivalent of voa is usual. Those equivalents are reflexiveswords like herself, itself, and so on; and voa is very handy for expressing them. As people start thinking more in Lojban, the others could get used more. Here are some more straightforward examples of its use:
la meilis. pensi voa

Mei Li thinks about herself.

le gerku cu batci voa

The dog bites itself.

You can also say

mi nelci voa

I like myself.

but this is the same as mi nelci mi, which is simpler.

la suzyn. zgana la djiotis. soi voa voe

Now for something cleverwhich will also look slightly familiar. Susan notices Jyoti and vice versa. Susan and Jyoti notice each other.

soi is a cmavo meaning something like you can change these sumti round and the bridi will still be

true. If there is only one sumti after the soi, the other one is taken to be the one immediately before soi. So we can say the same thing more briefly as la suzyn. zgana la djiotis. soi voa, or even just koa zgana koi soi voa. That is why you were able to use soi voa as and vice versa in the previous lessons exercises.
Note: voa is fixed in what it refers back to and, unlike ri, can point back to koathough you can also repeat koa if you prefer.

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Chapter 8. Swapping things round Tip: There is a gismu that does the same job, simxu: x1 (set) has members who mutually/reciprocally x2. You saw a sneak preview of this, too, in the previous lesson. It is mostly used in compound selbri (tanru), and from there, in lujvo (sim-, -siu). We havent covered enough grammar to use it properly yet, but youll be seeing it again towards the end of the lessons.

Summary

This lesson has introduced the following: Converting sentences (swapping round sumti) using se and its relatives; Making sumti from places other than x1 by the same method; Making negative lujvo using nal-. Making lujvo using sel-, vel- etc. and short combining forms (rafsi); Expressing reflexives and reciprocals using voa and soi.

Vocabulary
berti cinta cpina

ctebi fanza jarbu jmina kisto klaji jukpa

minra snanu nitcu

x1 is to the north/northern side [right-hand-rule pole] of x2 according to frame of reference x3 x1 [material] is a paint of pigment/active substance x2, in a base of x3 x1 is pungent/piquant/peppery/spicy/irritating to sense x2 x1 is a/the lip [body-part]/rim of orifice x2 of body x3; (adjective:) x1 is labial x1 (event) annoys/irritates/bothers/distracts x2 x1 is a suburban area of city/metropolis x2 x1 adds/combines x2 to/with x3, with result x4; x1 augments x2 by amount x3 x1 cooks/prepares food-for-eating x2 by recipe/method x3 (process) x1 reflects Pakistani/Pashto culture/nationality/language in aspect x2 x1 is a street/avenue/lane/drive/cul-de-sac/way/alley/[road] at x2 accessing x3 x1 reflects/mirrors/echoes x2 [object/radiation] to observer/point x3 as x4; x2 bounces on x1 x1 needs/requires/is dependent on/[wants] necessity x2 for purpose/action/stage of process x3 x1 is to the south/southern side of x2 according to frame of reference x3

Exercise 4
Translate from Lojban; some of the places used here are contorted into quite non-English forms, but try and be as idiomatic as possible. 1. .i le la djiotis. karce cu xe klama le gusta fu la djiotis .e la ranjit .e la suzyn. 2. .i la suzyn. catlu le voa ve minra 3. .i le goi cu jmina fi le voa ctebi cinta 4. .i ca lenu goi kei la suzyn. te minra la ranjit. soi voa 5. .i la suzyn. te preti fo la djiotis. fi lu .i ma te klaji fi ti liu 6. .i la ranjit. cusku lu .i le kisto jarbu 7. .i le vu se jukpa cu mutce cpina liu 8. .i la djiotis. se fanza cusku lu .i maa doi ranjit. klama lo berti lo snanu soi voe voi 9. .i pei le ve klama pe le gusta na te djuno fi do liu

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Chapter 8. Swapping things round

Answers to Exercises Exercise 1

1. lenu jamna cu se fengu 2. la jan. te xatra [mi ti] (Whether or not you include the mi and ti depends on whether they are important in this contextprobably they are obvious and can be missed out.) 3. loi jdini cu ve xlura mi lenu cliva le gugde (Money is an inducement for me to emigrate.) 4. la lojban. ve tavla fo lo prenu (There is a conversation in Lojban. We dont need lo prenu, though, since we can assume that it is people chatting in Lojban and not, say, chimpanzees.) 5. mi te dunda le cukta lo prenu

Exercise 2
1. le se klama 2. le ve klama 3. le te cmene 4. le xe fanva 5. le fanva (Hope you werent fooled!) 6. le ve cpedu (le se cpedu is what you ask for, not your request) 7. le te penmi 8. le ve ciska 9. le ve skicu 10. le te spuda

Exercise 3
1. lo veltivni 2. lo tertaa 3. lo seltcica 4. lo nalvue 5. lo teryree 6. lo nalvai 7. lo nalselvia 8. lo naltercni

Exercise 4
1. Jyotis car is the means by which Jyoti, Ranjeet and Susan get to the restaurant. 2. Susan looks at her reflection. (This is the more Lojbanic version of looks at herself in the mirror. There are other ways to say this, but we havent covered the requisite grammar yet.) 3. She puts on more lipstick. (Literally, She adds to her lip paint.)

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Chapter 8. Swapping things round 4. When this is happening, Susan and Ranjeet see each others reflection. 5. Susan asks Jyoti, Where does this street go to? 6. Ranjeet says, The Pakistani suburb. 7. The cuisine there is very spicy. 8. Jyoti irritatedly says, We, Ranjeet, have been going from south to north and back (i.e. from south to north and from north to south. This is probably one of the few times youll see soi voe instead of soi voa.) 9. I think the way of (= to) the restaurant is unknown to you.

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Internal sumti

Chapter 9. Let me qualify that: internal sumti and relative clauses

The business of a selbri (as you hopefully remember from Lesson 2) is to point out a relationship between one or more things (its sumti.) So when you say dunda, you mean that theres a giver, a receiver, and a gift involved. When you say klama, you mean that theres a traveller, a destination, an origin, a route, and a means of transportation involved. When you say mensi, you mean that theres someone who is a sister, and someone that shes a sister of. And so on.

Now, when we put an article in front of a selbri, we turn it into a sumti. But the selbri within a sumti remains a selbri: it still indicates that theres a relationship between some sumti of its own. If you say le dunda, you still mean that there is something the donor is giving, and someone they are giving it to. If you say lo xe klama, you still mean that there is someone going in the vehicle, somewhere they are going to, somewhere they are coming from, and some route they are taking. And as weve already hinted, it is meaningless just to say le mensi, just as we dont say the sister in English: a sister is always a sister of someone.

Previously, we have used pe to attach sumti to other sumti, in order to narrow things down. But that doesnt necessarily mean that what follows pe is a sumti of what comes before it. So if I describe my sister as le mensi pe mi my sister, for example, that might be the same as saying zoe (= my sister) mensi mi. But if I say le jdini pe mi my money, I certainly do not mean zoe jdini mithat I am the mint which issued the money! Obviously pe wont do as a general solution to filling in the selbri you might need. If you have a selbri contained inside a sumti, the way to give it a sumti of its own (an internal sumti) is to add it in with be. Youll remember (we hope!) that, when a selbri gets an article, its meaning is the x1 place of that selbri. By default, be fills in the x2 place of the sumti. So:
la renas. mensi mi le mensi be mi

Rena is my sister My sister

la renas. te dunda le cukta

Rena is given the book

le te dunda be le cukta

The recipient of the book Rena is going to Sydney

le klama be la sidnis. la renas. klama la sidnis.

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Chapter 9. Let me qualify that

The one going to Sydney As you can see, be can translateoften but not alwaysto English of. In fact, it covers surprisingly many of the functions of of. And because it is tied to a specific place of the sumti, its relation to the main sumti is unambiguous (another one of Lojbans selling points!)

What do these sumti mean in English? 1. le vecnu be le cukta 2. le cliva be la sanfransiskos. 3. le xe klama be la sanfransiskos. 4. le se xabju be la renas. 5. le detri be lenu mi cliva 6. le pendo be le penmi be la ranjit.

Exercise 1

More internal sumti

If you want to add a sumti to a place other than x2, you can use a FA tag. So: Rena is going from Melbourne
le klama be fi la melbn. ti xatra fo lei dinske la renas. klama fi la melbn.

The one going from Melbourne This is a letter about economics

le xatra be fo lei dinske

The letter about economics

If you want to be really thorough, you can add more than one sumti to the selbri in your sumti. The extra sumti are added in with bei, not be. This (like many things in Lojban) is to avoid ambiguity: if we just used be again, the new sumti would be considered a sumti of the sumti you just added, rather than the original sumti! OK, that wasnt terribly clear. Let me illustrate:
la renas. klama {le jarbu be la melbn.} le klama {be le jarbu be la melbn.}

Rena is going to a suburb of Melbourne The one going to a suburb of Melbourne

la renas. klama {le jarbu} {la melbn.}

Rena is going to a suburb, from Melbourne

le klama {be le jarbu} {bei la melbn.}

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Chapter 9. Let me qualify that

The one going to a suburb, from Melbourne This means, by the way, that you can nest sumti inside sumti inside sumti, up to and including the point where you fry your brain. To hold off on frying your brain just a little, you need to be able to say this is where the list of nested sumti stopsat least at the current level of nesting. That means a terminator, of course, and the terminator corresponding to be is beo. Armed with this little word, you can come up with phrases like these:
le xatra be la jan. bei la suzyn. la djiotis. mrilu ti la ranjit.

The letter to Zhang from Susan Jyoti mails this to Ranjeet

la djiotis. mrilu le xatra be la jan. bei la suzyn. la ranjit.

Jyoti mails {Susans letter to Zhang} to Ranjeet

le mrilu be le xatra be la jan. bei la suzyn. beo bei la ranjit.

The one who mails {Susans letter to Zhang} to Ranjeet

The one who mails {Susans letter to Zhang about Ranjeet}

Tip: Just because you can inflict such untold misery on the world as the examples above, doesnt mean you have to, of course. In fact, like ku and vau (and unlike kei), beo is not a word youll see that much of. This is because, when a nested sumti gets followed by a normal sumti, and is not preceded by be or bei, its pretty obvious that the new sumti is not nested as well, but rather belongs to the main selbri. So beo isnt normally needed to close off the list of nested sumtias long as the list is not all that complicated. (And it usually wont be.) For example:
mi penmi {le pendo be la ranjit. [beo]} le barja

le mrilu be le xatra be la jan. bei la suzyn. ____ bei la ranjit.

I met Ranjeets friend in the bar In such a phrase, the beo can (and will) be left out.

Vocabulary
cidjrkari ctuca

curry. Yes, this is a very odd-looking word; well explain why in a little while. x1 teaches audience x2 ideas/methods/lore x3 (duu) about subject(s) x4 by method x5 (event)

Convert the following selbri to sumti, by substituting ti with le. Use be, bei and beo as needed to link the existing sumti in to the new sumti. If you feel up to it, translate the sumti into as colloquial English as you can manage. 1. ti fanza la suzyn. 2. ti te jukpa loi cidjrkari 3. ti klaji le barja le gusta 4. ti se nitcu fi loinu jukpa loi cidjrkari 5. ti se nitcu la ranjit. loinu jukpa loi cidjrkari 6. ti preti lei xumske la jan. le ctuca

Exercise 2

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Chapter 9. Let me qualify that 7. ti kansa le ctuca be la ranjit. 8. ti kansa le ctuca be la ranjit. lenu pinxe loi birje (Hint: be careful about this one!)

Internal sumti tcita

Using be, you can attach the default places of a selbri to it when it acts as a sumti. But default places arent the only places a selbri can have. We have seen in Lesson 5 that sumti tcita and tense cmavo can be used to add new sumti to a selbri. You can add these kinds of places as internal sumti, as well. This can often be useful. For example, if I wanted to say This letter, dated the 4th, was mailed on the 7th I could try
le vi xatra dei li vo cu se mrilu dei li ze

But this would not work at all. A date tagged with dei applies to the whole bridi, and can appear anywhere in that bridi. So theres no actual way of telling that either date applies to the letter specifically. (Mere position is not enough to do it in Lojban.) What we want to say is that the former date applies just to the letter, and the latter date applies to the mailing of the letter. This means that the 4th, as a date, applies only to the sumti, le xatra, and not to the entire bridi. So it is an internal sumti:
le vi xatra be dei li vo cu se mrilu dei li ze

Much better. Still not usable everywhere, though. In particular, you wont be able to attach a sumti to something like a cmene, because it wont contain a selbri. In that case, you would use pe rather than be in front of the sumti tcita.

Huh? Well, lets try it slower. Take fie: a sumti tcita meaning authored by (from finti.) Now, fie, like by in English, tends to apply only to specific things, and not to events: you say a book by Dickens or a sonata by Mozart, not Jim went to the zoo, by Norman Mailer. (OK, you can say Jim Went To The Zoo, by Norman Mailer if Jim Went To The Zoo is the name of a book. But then by Norman Mailer is still attached to a thing, and not to an event.) So fie is almost always used as an internal sumti. This means you can say
le cukta be fie la dikens. Tip: As it happens, thats the same as saying le cukta be fi la dikens. . The good thing about sumti tcita is, you can use them when youve forgotten the default places of your selbri. Which you will.

So how do I say Oliver Twist by Dickens is very good? I could say

la .Oliver.tuist. be fie la dikens. cu mutce xamgu

But that looks kind of odd: .Oliver.tuist is not really a selbri, so it is strange to say that it actually has sumti places of its own. (As it turns out, in fact, this is considered ungrammatical in Lojban.) But if you say
la .Oliver.tuist. pe fie la dikens. cu mutce xamgu

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Chapter 9. Let me qualify that

you arent really committing to .Oliver.tuist being a selbri; youre merely saying that the phrase authored by Dickens is closely associated with the thing youre calling la .Oliver.tuist.

Vocabulary
kakne pluja lidne

x1 is able to do/be/capable of doing/being x2 (event/state) under conditions x3 (event/state) x1 precedes/leads x2 in sequence x3; x1 is former/preceding/previous; x2 is latter/following x1 is complex/complicated/involved in aspect/property x2 (ka) by standard x3

Translate the following sentences into Lojban. The highlighted terms are to be attached into the sentence with sumti tcita; we give you the sumti tcita you need for each sentence. Youll have to work out whether the highlighted term is an internal sumti (in which case use be or pe to link it in), or a normal sumti. 1. I mail you in Lojban (bau: in language..., from bangu language) 2. I give you a book in Lojban (bau: in language..., from bangu language) 3. According to Jyoti, Ranjeet is foolish (cuu: as said by..., from cusku express) 4. So named by Susan, Chemistry Irritant drinks German beer (te mee: as a name used by..., from te cmene name) 5. Names in Lojban are preceded by la (se pau: as a part of..., from se pagbu have as a part. Theres a trick to the quotation here (and you do need to use a quotation); check Lesson 7 again...) 6. City roads are very complicated; for example, Ranjeet cannot go to the Pakistani restaurant (muu: exemplified by..., from mupli example)

Exercise 3

Relative clauses

Nesting sumti within sumti goes a long way towards pinning down what exactly we mean; but its not always going to work. If for example, I have two sisters, I can point out that they are mensi be mi until Im blue in the face; but that wont go any further towards distinguishing one from the other. What Id want to do instead is introduce a new bridi into the mix: the sister Im talking about is the one who doesnt like Ricky Martin, say, or the one you saw at the restaurant last night. Similarly, if Im talking about two different Pakistani restaurants, pointing out that the type of food they serve is Pakistani (gusta be loi kisto) doesnt go very far in differentiating them; pointing out the one which is north of town, or the one I eat curry at, does. What I want, in other words, are relative clauses. In fact, they are what Ive just used in English: phrases like who doesnt like Ricky Martin; [which] I eat curry at; and so on. These clauses contain a verb and nouns in English: they correspond to Lojban bridi, though they might be missing a word or two. What we need in Lojban is some way of connecting a bridi like this to a sumtiwithout necessarily the peculiarities of words like who and that.

Lojban allows this: you connect a relative clausea bridi narrowing down what a sumti meansby using poi. And just as with nu and its relatives (those other words which nest bridi inside bridi in Lojban), you want a terminator to say the relative clause is over, the rest of these words belong to the main bridi now. That terminator is kuo. So lets try this out. How would we say You talked to my sisterthe one who doesnt like Ricky Martinabout economics? Lets take it by steps:

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Chapter 9. Let me qualify that do pu tavla le mi mensi loi dinske

You talked to my sister about economics

le mi mensi na nelci la rikis.martin.

My sister does not like Ricky Martin

do pu tavla le mi mensi {poi le mi mensi na nelci la rikis.martin. kuo} loi dinske

You talked to my sister who doesnt like Ricky Martin about economics

Notice that you needed the kuo there, to keep the relative clause out of the hair of the main bridi. Otherwise, loi dinske would be a sumti of nelci and not tavlawhich is not really what you want. Just as with nu and kei, though, Lojbanists will normally make sure they dont have to use kuo, by little tricks like making sure the relative clause comes just before cuwhich shuts every open clause down. Heres another example:
mi klama le gusta be loi kisto

I go to the Pakistani restaurant

le gusta be loi kisto cu berti le tcadu

The Pakistani restaurant is north of town

mi klama lo gusta be loi kisto beo {poi ra berti le tcadu}

I go to the Pakistani restaurant which is north of town

kea
Were almost there; but youll notice weve repeated le mi mensi twice. We might have tried using ri to refer back to le mi mensi. But youll remember from the exercises to Lesson 7 the acute pain associated with using ri: we should be avoiding it where possible. (In this instance, in fact, we cant use it properly anyway, because a sumti includes its relative clause; so ri would not be referring back to a completed sumti, like its supposed to: the risk of insane recursion is just too great.) A similar problem arises with ra referring back to le gusta be loi kisto: ra isnt particularly precise, so if at all possible wed like to use a less ambiguous sumti in its place. Fortunately, we can avoid ri and ra after all: relative clauses in Lojban have a special pro-sumti, kea, which like who and which in English points back to the sumti youve been talking about. So now, we can make a stab at all four relative clauses in our example:
le mi mensi poi kea na nelci la rikis.martin.

My sister, such that she doesnt like Ricky Martin My sister who doesnt like Ricky Martin
le mi mensi poi do viska kea ca le purlamcte

My sister, such that you saw her at the restaurant during the immediately-preceding-night My sister whom you saw at the restaurant last night
{le gusta be loi kisto beo} poi kea berti le tcadu

The restaurant of Pakistani things such that it is north of the city The Pakistani restaurant which is north of town (The beo is needed, because what youre describing as being north is the restaurant, not the Pakistani cuisine it serves.)

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Chapter 9. Let me qualify that le gusta be loi kisto beo poi mi citka loi cidjrkari nei kea

The restaurant of Pakistani things, such that I eat curry in it The Pakistani restaurant [that] I eat curry in The Pakistani restaurant where I eat curry

To make things somewhat more succinct, there exists a convention that, when a relative clause is missing its kea, you fill it in at the first available empty place. Which means, if the bridi after poi has nothing in its x1 place, thats where the kea goes. If it has an x1 place but no x2 place, then thats where
kea goes. (This way, poi-clauses look a little more like most languages relative clauses, as they dont use a distinct word for kea and poi.) So our example phrases become: le mi mensi poi na nelci la rikis.martin. le mi mensi poi do viska ca le purlamcte le gusta be loi kisto beo poi berti le tcadu le gusta be loi kisto beo poi mi citka loi cidjrkari nei kea

The last sentence hasnt changed: the convention does not apply to non-default places (like sumti tcita and spatial tense places), since they dont follow a predictable order.
Note: This means that (as youll have already seen several times by now) Lojban, like normal languages, has usage and conventions, over and above its notions of grammaticality and logic. Strictly speaking, there is nothing wrong with saying lemi mensi poi tavla and actually meaning le mensi poi tavla kea my sister who is talked to instead of le mensi poi kea tavla my sister who talks: This is merely an omitted place, after all, and the value that fits the omitted place is theoretically open. And Lojban is by its nature a stickler for the Letter of the Law. Yet you will still find that, like any language actually used by a community, there are more and less usual ways of saying things in Lojban. Tip: If you ever want to hang two relative clauses off the same sumti, use zie to connect them. This corresponds to English and, since both clauses are supposed to be true. (More on this in Lesson 11.) For example,
le mi mensi poi na nelci la rikis.martin. zie poi do viska ca le purlamcte

My sister who doesnt like Ricky Martin and whom you saw last night.

Exercise 4
Combine the following pairs of sentences into single sentences. In each case, make the second sentence a relative clause modifying the highlighted sumti in the first sentence. The highlighted sumti in the second sentence is the same as that in the first, and will turn into kea; leave kea out, where the convention allows it. Also leave out kuo where this would not result in ambiguity. For example:
.i mi viska le botpi .i le botpi cu culno .i mi viska le botpi poi culno

Watch out for any terminators you may have to insert! 1. .i le ninmu cu dunda le cifnu le nanmu .i le nanmu cu citka loi cidjrkari 2. .i le ninmu cu dunda le cifnu le nanmu .i le cifnu cu kakne lenu citka 3. .i le ninmu cu dunda le cifnu le nanmu .i mi pu viska le ninmu vi le barja

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Chapter 9. Let me qualify that 4. .i le ninmu cu dunda le cifnu le nanmu .i lenu mi viska le ninmu cu nandu 5. .i mi viska va le barja le ninmu .i mi klama le barja le briju 6. .i ca lenu mi klama le barja le briju kei mi penmi le nanmu .i le barja cu snanu le briju 7. .i mi viska le kansa be le ninmu .i le ninmu cu dunda le cifnu le kansa be le ninmu 8. .i mi kakne lenu citka loi cidjrkari .i lenu citka loi cidjrkari cu nandu

Restrictive and non-restrictive

Weve learnt how to use relative clauses to narrow things down. But not all relative clauses are used for that purpose. Sometimes they are used just to supply extra information about someone or something whose identity weve already worked out. For example, if I say Lojban, which is descended from (Institute) Loglan, has a public domain grammar Im hardly saying that Lojban is descended from Institute Loglan, in order to distinguish it from the scores of Lojbans not descended from Loglan! Instead, Im providing extra, incidental information, to fill in the listener or reader.

This means that there are two kinds of relative clause: restrictive, like weve been discussing until now, and non-restrictive, like what weve just seen. The grammar of these kinds of relative clause is different in many languages. In American English, for example, style guides recommend that you keep who and which for non-restrictives, and use that for restrictives. (The Lojban that I learned in 1993 is somewhat different from contemporary Lojban.) Furthermore, non-restrictive relative clauses in English usually have a comma in front of them, in writing, and a little pause in front of them, in speaking: this kind of clause is pretty much a parenthetical remark, and is marked out like one. Lojban distinguishes between the two kinds of relative clause by the word that introduces them: nonrestrictive relative clauses start with noi, rather than poi. Otherwise, their grammar is identical:
la lojban. noi [kea] se dzena la loglan. pe le ckule cu se gerna lo gubni

Lojban, which (non-restrictive) [it] has-the-ancestor Loglan-of-the-institute, has-as-its-grammar something-public

(Yes, thats the old cu closing off everything in its wake trick in action.)
Note: The restrictive/non-restrictive divide also applies to a word we saw back in Lesson 3: pe. This word is in fact a special case of a relative clause (introducing a sumti rather than a complete bridi.) Since it is a relative clause in a way, it too can have a non-restrictive version: ne.

Exercise 5
Are the relative clauses in the following English sentences restrictive or non-restrictive? Weve left off any punctuation hints like commas or choice of correct relativisers, so some sentences will sound a little odd. 1. This is the way that the world ends. 2. I saw the same waiter that I saw last night. 3. This is my friend Zhang that I already told you about. 4. Then came a full train that I wasnt going to bother boarding.

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Chapter 9. Let me qualify that 5. Im doing the best that I can. 6. Radiophones that are generally known as radios are prevalent at the majority of work places. 7. I dont like what has happened. 8. I live in the city centre where the rent is more expensive.

Summary

In this lesson, we have covered the following: Internal sumti (be, bei, beo); Internal sumti attached with sumti tcita (pe, fie); Restrictive relative clauses (poi, kuo, kea) Non-restrictive relative clauses (noi, ne)

Vocabulary
bartu cacra fonxa jgari

janco jgita

jgitrviolino jundi kanla kerfa moi mintu nenri simsa secau zgike sazri

x1 is on the outside of x2; x1 is exterior to x2 x1 is x2 hours in duration (default is 1 hour) by standard x3 x1 is a telephone transceiver/modem attached to system/network x2 x1 is a/the shoulder/hip/joint [body-part] attaching limb/extremity x2 to body x3 x1 grasps/holds/clutches/seizes/grips/[hugs] x2 with x3 (part of x1) at locus x4 (part of x2) x1 is a guitar/violin/fiddle/harp [stringed musical instrument] with actuator/plectrum/bow x2 x1 is a violin x1 is attentive towards/attends/tends/pays attention to object/affair x2 x1 is a/the eye [body-part] of x2; [metaphor: sensory apparatus]; (adjective:) x1 is ocular x1 is a/the hair/fur [body-part] of x2 at body location x3 x1 is the same/identical thing as x2 by standard x3; (x1 and x2 interchangeable) convert number to ordinal selbri; x1 is (n)th member of set x2 ordered by rule x3 x1 is in/inside/within x2; x1 is on the inside/interior of x2 [totally within the bounds of x2] x1 is similar/parallel to x2 in property/quantity x3 (ka/ni); x1 looks/appears like x2 x1 operates/drives/runs x2 [apparatus/machine] with goal/objective/use/end/function x3 sumti tcita: without... (from se claxu lacked) x1 is music performed/produced by x2 (event)

Exercise 6
Translate from Lojban: 1. .i bazi lo cacra be li pimu le karce cu zvati le kisto gusta 2. .i la djiotis. noi sazri le karce cu fengu la ranjit. lenu na jundi le ve klama 3. .i la ranjit. jundi la suzyn. soi voa 4. .i la ranjit. ca tavla la suzyn. loi zgike pe fie la .ioxan.sebastian.bax 5. .i la suzyn. na se cinri lenu jundi loi zgike pe la bax. noi kea dotco 6. .i kui la suzyn. mutce se cinri lenu jundi le kanla be la ranjit. 7. .i la suzyn. nelci lenu zgana le kerfa be la ranjit. bei le ctebi beo noi zoe pe la lex.va,uensas. cu simsa 8. .i la djiotis. noi denpa vi le bartu be le gusta cu sazri lo se bevri fonxa ne la nokias.

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Chapter 9. Let me qualify that 9. .i cusku lu .i coi jan. mie djiotis. 10. .i ko penmi mia vi le dansydiu pe vi la re moi klaji ba lo cacra be li re liu

Exercise 7
Translate into Lojban: 1. When Jyoti goes to the interior of the restaurant, Susan asks her Where were you? 2. Jyoti says I was talking to a friend I forgot to talk to earlier. 3. Susan says Ranjeet was telling me that Bachs music is like Pakistani music in its complexity. 4. Jyoti says Susan, you think anything without a guitar is complex. 5. Ranjeet says The violin is identical to the guitar one carries on the shoulder. 6. Jyoti says Ranjeet is identical to one unable to go to a restaurant north of town. 7. What will you be eating? 8. Susan and Ranjeet stare at each other. 9. Jyoti, who is bored by the staring, asks for the carrier (= waiter) to her left to come.

Answers to Exercises Exercise 1

1. The seller of the book. 2. The one leaving from San Francisco. 3. The vehicle going to San Francisco. (mi klama la sanfransiskos. fu le karce le karce cu xe klama la sanfransiskos. fu mi) 4. The dwelling of Rena. (la renas. xabju le zdani le zdani cu se xabju la renas.) 5. The date of my leaving; the date of my departure. 6. The friend of the one meeting Ranjeet; the friend of the meet-er of Ranjeet. (Yes indeed, internal sumti can nest. Somehow, I dont think youre really all that surprised...)

Exercise 2
1. le fanza be la suzyn.: Susans annoyance, what annoyed Susan 2. le te jukpa be loi cidjrkari: the recipe for curry 3. le klaji be le barja bei le gusta: the road at (or from) the bar to the restaurant 4. le se nitcu be fi loinu jukpa loi cidjrkari: the requirements for cooking curry. (loi cidjrkari is safely tucked away inside the loinu jukpa abstraction, so theres no reason that be need be worried about it.) 5. le se nitcu be la ranjit. bei loinu jukpa loi cidjrkari: Ranjeets requirements for cooking curry 6. le preti be lei xumske bei la jan. bei le ctuca: Zhangs question about chemistry to the teacher 7. le kansa be le ctuca be la ranjit.: the one with Ranjeets teacher, Ranjeets teachers partner 8. le kansa be le ctuca be la ranjit. beo bei lenu pinxe loi birje: Ranjeets teachers partner in drinking beer.

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Chapter 9. Let me qualify that Note: You absolutely must have that beo there; otherwise, lenu pinxe loi birje would be the x3 sumti not of kansa (the collaborative effort), but of ctuca (the subject taught). The meaning would then be The partner of Ranjeets teacher about drinking beer. Remember, Lojban words attach to the words closest to them, unless a terminator intervenes.) Of course, you would never say le ctuca be la ranjit. bei le nu pinxe loi birje, because youve noticed that the x3 of ctuca is a fact (duu) and not an event (nu)and you would never get the two confused. Right?

Exercise 3
1. mi mrilu fi do bau la lojban. 2. mi dunda lo cukta be bau la lojban. do (The book is in Lojban; the giving is not.) 3. cuu la djiotis. la ranjit. bebna (Since Jyoti said the whole bridi, the sumti applies to the whole bridiso it cannot be internal.) 4. la xumske fanza ku pe te mee la suzyn. pinxe loi dotco birje (Yes, trick question. Despite where so named by Susan sits in the sentence, it applies only to the studious person of Zhang, and not to his preferences in alcohol.) Tip: The need for ku in the sentence above is very deep voodoo, so theres no need for you to be particularly concerned about it (yet). As The Complete Lojban Language, Chapter 8.6 points out, without the ku any qualifying phrase becomes part of the name. To illustrate this, consider the old parlor trick of calling someone Nobody. This is a device as old as Homer, and is used to work in jokes like Nobody hurt me! Lojban disallows this kind of ambiguity (consider why), so this kind of joke is impossible in the language. (The notorious Whos on First? sketch by Abbott & Costello is un-Lojbanisable for the same reason.) But youll still want to talk about people called Nobody. So suppose youre talking about the Greek Nobody (Homers Otis), and comparing him to the Latin Nobody (Jules Vernes Captain Nemo). And in a pique of Lojban purism, you decide to refer to both with Lojbanised namesla nomei. If now you want to say The Greek Nobody, you cant say la nomei poi xelso. That would mean that Odysseus identified himself to the Cyclops not as Nobody, but as Nobody Who Is Greek (something like Otis Hs Akhais in Greek.) You want to make sure that the cmene is over before the relative clause begins. Since this cmene contains a selbri, it is terminated with ku: la nomei ku poi xelso. If youd stuck with la .utis., the pause would have been signal enough that the cmene is over, so the issue would not arise. No, of course you werent meant to know all that. But arent you happy you know it now? 5. loi cmene be se pau la lojban. [cu] se lidne lou la leu (Hope you remembered to put la inside the Lojban error quotes lou ... leu! You cant use lu ... liu, because la by itself doesnt make sense as a fragment of Lojban.) 6. loi tcadu klaji cu mutce pluja muu lenu la ranjit na kakne lenu klama le kisto gusta (Ranjeets navigational difficulties are an illustration of the complexity of city streetsnot of the streets themselves.)

Exercise 4
1. .i le ninmu cu dunda le cifnu le nanmu poi citka loi cidjrkari The woman gives the baby to the man who eats curry 2. .i le ninmu cu dunda le cifnu poi kakne lenu citka kuo le nanmu The woman gives the baby who can eat to the man (If you did not insert kuo, you would be claiming that the infant can eat the man!) 3. .i le ninmu poi mi pu viska vi le barja cu dunda le cifnu le nanmu The woman I saw at the bar gives the baby to the man (Despite the presence of vi le barja, kea can be dropped off, since it occupies the first available default place in its bridi.)

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Chapter 9. Let me qualify that 4. .i le ninmu poi lenu mi viska kea cu nandu cu dunda le cifnu le nanmu The woman that it is difficult for me to see gives the baby to the man (kea cannot be dropped off, since it doesnt occupy a default place of the relative clause bridi, but rather a nested place inside an abstraction within the bridi.) 5. .i mi viska va le barja poi mi klama fi le briju kuo le ninmu I saw, some way away from the bar that I go to from work, the woman (The x2 place of klama is left empty as the place where kea belongs; so now you have to insert fi to make sure le briju is the origin, not the destination. You also need to insert kuo; otherwise le ninmu becomes a sumti of klama instead of viska: the woman becomes not who you see, but the route you take to the bar (!) .) 6. .i ca lenu mi klama le barja poi snanu le briju kuo le briju kei mi penmi le nanmu While going to the bar [which is] south of the office from the office, I meet the man (Again, kuo needs to be inserted, to prevent le briju being incorporated into snanu: going to the bar south of the office from the offices perspective, rather than going from the office to the bar south of the office. 7. .i mi viska le kansa be le ninmu beo poi le ninmu cu dunda le cifnu I see the womans companion, who the woman gave the baby to (You must insert beo, so that the relative clause applies to the entire sumti, le kansa be le ninmu. Otherwise, it will apply only to the sumti it is right next to, le ninmu: I see the companion of the woman the woman gave the baby to.) 8. .i mi kakne lenu citka loi cidjrkari kei poi nandu I can eat curry, which is difficult (Again, you must insert kei, so that the relative clause applies to the entire abstraction. Otherwise, what is difficult is not eating the curry, but the curry itself.)

Exercise 5
1. Restrictive: the way is pretty meaningless unless you say what it is the way of. 2. Restrictive: again, the same waiter is being uniquely identified by the relative clause, and is otherwise pretty opaque. 3. Non-restrictive: normally, the description my friend Zhang should be doing a good job of identifying who is being talked about. 4. Non-restrictive: although this is an indefinite noun phrase in English, the relative clause given doesnt make it any more definite: Id be saying the same about any full train. 5. Restrictive: the best is meaningless without the following relative clause. 6. Non-restrictive: obviously, this is merely providing an alternative name for the same thing. 7. Restrictive: in fact, this is what is called in English a headless relativisernot because the relative clause is about decapitated horsemen in Washington Irving short stories, but because there is no noun (head) there for the relative clause to narrow down at all! So the relative clause ends up supplying all the information on what is being talked about. Thats as restrictive as it gets. Lojban would use a fairly empty head to translate this something like da. 8. Non-restrictiveunless you live in a city with multiple city centres. In which case Id move away, if I were you: the traffic must be murder...

Exercise 6
1. A little after half an hour, the car is at the Pakistani restaurant. Note: That odd expression lo cacra be li pimu is in fact how youd normally say half an hour. In general, when Lojban measures things, it doesnt divide them up into n individual units, but rather says that x measures n units. So Reading this lesson took me two hours would be in Lojban lenu mi tcidu le vi ve cilre cu cacra li re.

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Chapter 9. Let me qualify that Weve also specified a distance after the half an hour, through zi. Logically, ba lo cacra be li pimu will be true if I show up after half an hour, or after three hours: in both cases, youve shown up after half an hour. By adding zi, youre making sure that youre not allowing that kind of latitude: the event happens in the immediate vicinity of half an hour later. This is being pedantic, of course; but of such pedantry is Lojban made. 2. Jyoti, who was driving the car, is angry at Ranjeet for not paying attention to the route. (Literally, Jyoti, who was operating the car. Lojban tends to keep its gismu fairly vague: there is no essential difference, as far as its concerned, between what you do with a car, a computer, or an espresso machine.) 3. Ranjeet and Susan have been paying attention to each other. 4. Ranjeet is now talking to Susan about music by Johann Sebastian Bach. 5. Susan is not interested in paying attention to music by Bachwho is German. (Bach, not the music! Although, on second thought...) 6. But Susan is very interested in paying attention to Ranjeets eyes. 7. Susan likes observing Ranjeets lip hair (= moustache), which Lech Waesas looks like. (You need the beo, otherwise it will be Ranjeets lip that Waesas moustache resembles.)

8. Jyoti, who is waiting at the outside of the restaurant (= outside the restaurant), is operating a Nokia mobile phone. (Since this is presumably Jyotis only mobile phone, we do not need to use pe: the brand is only incidental information, and we dont need it to narrow down which phone is being operated. So ne is the word to use.) 9. She says Hello Zhang. This is Jyoti. (Hope you remembered coi from Lesson 7!)

10. Meet us at the disco at Second Street after (= in) two hours. (Sorry about springing that ordinal on you. All Lojban ordinalspamoi first, bimoi eighth, nomoi zeroth, romoi allth = lastare formed in the same way.)

Exercise 7
2. .i la djiotis. cusku lu .i mi pu tavla lo pendo poi mi toe morji lenu mi tavla kea puku liu (You have to insert the kea.) 3. .i la suzyn. cusku lu .i la ranjit pu tavla mi leseduu le zgike be fie la bax. cu simsa le kisto zgike le ka pluja liu (We tucked away ka in an earlier lesson; nu or suu would be just as fine. You could also have said the less specific le zgike pe la bax. or le la bax. zgike; this could mean the music Bach played or owned, rather than wrote, but in context its clear enough.) 1. .i ca lenu la djiotis. klama le nenri be le gusta kei la suzyn. te preti fo dy. fi lu .i do zvati ma liu (or: te preti lu .i do zvati ma liu la djiotis.)

5. .i la ranjit cusku lu .i le jgitrviolino cu mintu le jgita poi zoe bevri vi le janco liu

4. .i la djiotis. cusku lu .i doi suzyn. do jinvi leduu ro da pe secau lo jgita cu pluja liu (Lojban does not distinguish between anything, everything and all things.)

Note: Two things. First, Lojban doesnt encourage you to say that one sumti is another sumti; there is a word, du, that sort of does that, but you should think of it as being more like an equals sign (see Lesson 12.) If you want to say that a violin is a guitar, it is better to say either that they are identical (le jgitrviolino cu mintu le jgita), or to turn one of the two sumti into a selbri (lo jgitrviolino cu jgita). Since we need a relative clause here, we have gone with the former. The other thing is that Ranjeet (much to Jyotis annoyance) is correct in his Lojban usage. In order to have as broad a coverage as possible, gismu tend to be inclusive rather than narrow in their definitions; we already saw that with Jyoti operating her car. So while the Lojban wordlists list jgita under guitar, the gismu is actually used to refer to any stringed instrument. Jyoti should have specified Susans instrument of choice as jgitrgitara (a guitar guitar), or even dikca jgitrgitara electric guitar.

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Chapter 9. Let me qualify that Those funny-looking words are loan words into Lojban (fuivla), and we will also be covering them in Lesson 12. 6. .i la djiotis. cusku lu .i la ranjit. mintu da poi na kakne lenu klama lo gusta poi berti le tcadu (or: la ranjit mintu lo na kakne be lenu klama lo gusta poi berti le tcadu)

7. .i do ba citka ma liu (You could specify that Jyoti means both of them by using re do or ro do, but you wouldnt normally bother unless it was somehow vital.) 8. .i la suzyn. catlu la ranjit. soi voa

9. .i la djiotis. noi toe se cinri lenu catlu cu cpedu fi le bevri pe zua voa fe lenu klama (or: cpedu le nu klama kei le bevri pe zua voa) (As you can see, voa is more useful than you might have thought!)

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Chapter 10. Cause and Effect

Most children go through a phase where every second sentence seems to start with why? For example:

Why is it raining?

Why did Sally hit me?

Why does Sally always get a star from the teacher? Why did Fluffy have to die?

To these, the frustrated parent may give a series of answers with because:

Because the clouds are crying. Because you pulled her hair. Because she works hard.

Because Fluffy is a rabbit, and rabbits dont live very long.

What neither the child nor his long-suffering parent are aware of is that in these examples, the whys ask different questions and the becauses give different kinds of answers. In some languages, in fact, we would use different words for them: Turkish has three words for why, and until recently even English had two (the other being wherefore, as in wherefore art thou Romeo?) We would expect, then, that Lojban would have at least four words for why, but in fact it doesnt, since all such questions are handled with ma. What Lojban does have is four words for because.

Physical causation

Going back to the first question, Why does it rain?, the child is asking for a physical explanation, and this is what he gets. If we express the rather unlikely explanation in Lojban, we get
lenu lei dilnu cu klaku cu rinka lenu carvi

the-event the-mass-of cloud weep physically-cause the-event rain The clouds crying is making it rain.

rinka means cause in a physical or mechanical sense:

x1 (event/state) effects/physically causes effect x2 (event/state) under conditions x3 To change this cause to a because, we can use ria. This is a sumti tcita derived from rinka, in the same way that we saw dei derived from detri in Lesson 5. So it adds a new place to the bridi it sits in: just as dei means with date, ria means with physical cause. This means we can now say
carvi ria lenu lei dilnu cu klaku

which is much more elegant. (Note that Lojban does not need the empty it in Its raining.)

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The reason I have emphasised that rinka and ria only deal with physical causes is that it cannot apply in many cases where an English-speaker would use because. Consider the second example. If we say
la salis. darxi do ria lenu do lacpu lei kerfa

Sally hits you with-physical-cause you pull the-mass-of hair

this is nonsense, since it means that little Joey pulling Sallys hair physically caused her to hit him, which would only be true if Joey had pulled her hair so hard that she had fallen on top of him, perhaps.

Motivation

In the hair-pulling case, what we have is not two events which are physically connected, like clouds and rain, but three events: 1. Joey pulls Sallys hair. 3. Sally hits Joey. 2. Sally decides, as a result of this, to hit Joey.

For the sake of convenience, English misses out the second event and says Sally hit Joey because he pulled her hair. However, this is not only vague but, some would say, psychologically dangerous. People do not generally react to stimuli automatically, but as a result of motivation, and confusing complex responses with simple physical causation may lead us to believe that we have no control over our emotions or even our actions. Whether or not we believe in free will at a metaphysical level, it is useful to distinguish between physical reactions and responses which have a cognitive/emotional element. Not surprisingly, then, Lojban has a separate gismu for motivation: mukti. The full definition of mukti is x1 (action/event/state) motivates/is a motive/incentive for action/event x2, per volition of x3 We can therefore say
lenu do lacpu lei kerfa [pe la salis.] cu mukti lenu la salis. darxi do [kei la salis]

the-event you pull the-mass hair [related-to Sally] motivates the-event Sally hit you [through the volition of Sally] Your pulling Sallys hair motivated her to hit you.

As we can see, the third place is nearly always unnecessary, since we can assume that the agent of the second event is also the person who decides to do it. Even so, this structure is a bit clumsy, so again we would normally use a sumti tcitain this case, mui. This gives us
la salis. darxi do mui lenu do lacpu lei kerfa

Sally hits you with-motive you pull the-mass hair

Dont bother to translate these sentences, just decide whether they should use ria or mui. 1. The can exploded because it was hot.

Exercise 1

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Chapter 10. Cause and Effect 2. I felt afraid because I heard a noise. 3. The people revolted because of the high taxes. 4. The bread is moldy because you left it in the plastic wrapper. 5. Prices have risen because of excessive wage claims.

Justification and Implication

The difference between motivation and justification is not always clear, but we can say that the latter involves some rule or standard while the former does not require this. Going back to the example of Sally and the teacher, it is possible to say
la salis. te dunda lo tartcita le ctuca mui lenu sy. tcetoi gunka

Sally is-given a star-label [by] the teacher with-motivation she much-try work

However, this says only that Sallys hard work motivated the teacher to give her a star. It does not imply that it is the custom for teachers to give stars (or star-labels, as I have rather pedantically translated it) as a reward for good work. What we need here is kiu, the sumti tcita from krinu: x1 (event/state) is a reason/justification/explanation for/causing/permitting x2 (event/state) We can therefore more accurately say
lenu la salis. tcetoi gunka cu krinu lenu le ctuca cu dunda lo tartcita sy.

or, as in the earlier example,

la salis. te dunda lo tartcita le ctuca kiu lenu sy. tcetoi gunka Note: Dont get kiu mixed up with kui but, however! kiu appeals to more general considerations than mui, but it still deals with human standards, not

logical laws. Only a very naive student would believe that if a student is given a star, it must logically imply that that student has worked hard. In the tragic case of Fluffy, however, the fact that Fluffy is a rabbit logically implies that he will not live long, given what we know about rabbits. Here we can confidently use nibli x1 logically necessitates/entails/implies action/event/state x2 under rules/logic system x3 The sentence
lenu la flufis. ractu cu nibli lenu fy. mrobio

the-event Fluffy is-a-rabbit implies the-event he dies

actually misses out a step (the information that rabbits are short-lived) but it will do for practical purposes. If you want a textbook logic example, you can say
la flufis. ractu .ije ro ractu nae zeu jmive .i la flufis. nii na zeu jmive

This expresses the following:

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1. Fluffy is a rabbit and all rabbits are not long-lived. 2. Fluffy is therefore not long-lived.

Converting causes

The reason I have included this blindingly obvious piece of logic is that it demonstrates how sentences can be joined, and how because can be turned into therefore. Well deal with the second part first, because theres a few issues about connecting sentences we want to leave till the next section. So for now, dont worry about .ije. Do worry, however, about nii. What we have here is a proposition (Fluffy is a rabbit, and rabbits dont live long), and a conclusion (Fluffy doesnt live long.) So what is nii doing in front of the final selbri? Lojban treats sumti tcita the same as tenses; so nii can go in front of the selbri, as if it was a tense. This corresponds to an adverb like therefore in English; in terms of Lojban, however, it means the same as if youd said nii zoe because of something obvious (in this case, the preceding two sentences). So in this construction, nii, used as a tense (or nii zoe, using an ellipsed sumti) correspond to therefore. But in the following sentence, where nii is a sumti tcita introducing a distinct sumti and not a tense, nii does not mean therefore. As wed expect, nii relates a sumti to its bridi through the gismu underlying nii, namely nibli logically necessitates.. So nii means logically because:
la flufis. mrobio nii lenu ro ractu nae zeu jmive

Fluffy past die with-logical-necessity the-event all rabbits other-than long-time-period live Fluffy died because rabbits dont live long.

But what is the sumti tcita for therefore? How do we say the reverseRabbits dont live long; therefore Fluffy diedin a single sentence? As it turns out, we say it like this:
ro ractu nae zeu jmive senii lenu la flufis. mrobio

Rabbits dont live long, with the logical consequence that Fluffy died.

We have here a sumti tcita, senii, which means with the logical consequence that, i.e. therefore. And this senii looks a lot like nii, the sumti tcita meaning logically because.

Actually, you should have seen enough to work out the relation between the two from Lesson 9. As you saw there, sumti tcita can be modified with se, te, ve, xe, just like their underlying gismu. You know by now that the sumti introduced by nii is le nibli that which logically necessitates, the logical cause. This means that se nii is a sumti tcita introducing le se niblithat which is logically necessitated; the logical result. So we have a pair: nii the logically necessitator, logically because, and senii the logically necessitated, logically therefore. We can apply this principle to the other sumti tcita weve looked at. Here are some examples:
le lante cu spoja ria lenu ri pu glare

the can explode with-physical-cause the-event it past is-hot The can exploded because it was hot.
le lante pu glare seria lenu ri spoja

the can past is-hot with-physical-result the-event it explode

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The can was hot, so it exploded.

soi prenu cu nelci la djiotis. mui lenu ri xajmi

many people like Jyoti with-motivation the-event she is-funny Many people like Jyoti because shes funny.
la djiotis. xajmi semui lenu soi prenu cu nelci dy.

Jyoti is-funny with-motivated-result the-event many people like her Jyoti is funny, so many people like her.

This is just like Exercise 1, except that now we have eight choices: ria, mui, kiu, nii and their se forms. For each sentence, choose the most suitable sumti tcita. 1. Alien Bloodbath won an Oscar because of its brilliant special effects. 2. I like Quines Rabbit because its got an exciting story-line. 3. He spilt my beer, so I hit him. 4. He walks like that because he has an artificial leg. 5. Shes Australian, so she must like Vegemite. 6. That computer cant get a virus because its running Linux. 7. You have committed adultery, and thus shall burn in Hell.

Exercise 2

Connecting sentences

Lets revisit that piece of logic we were ruminating on earlier:

la flufis. ractu .ije ro ractu nae zeu jmive .i la flufis. nii na zeu jmive

Weve seen how .i shows that a new sentence is starting; but we can also tag things onto the .i. Weve seen (in passing) that two sumti can be joined with .e. In the same way, .ije joins two sentences with a logical AND, i.e. it asserts that both sentences are true. Normally we dont need to do this, since we usually assume that what we say is true; but it is useful here, because it binds the first two sentences together, so that when the conclusion sentence comes, it therefores both of them, not just the second. (This is called left-grouping and there are ways to override it, which well come back to.)
Note: Again, this sentence misses out a number of logical steps, including the fact that Fluffy is a rabbit and that he had lived out his rabbit life naturally, rather than getting eaten by a dogbut you get the idea, I hope.

Now, lenu-abstractions can be treated as sentences: they contain complete bridi, after all. So we can also phrase these sentences as separate sentences, still using sumti tcita to connect them:
la flufis. mrobio nii lenu ro ractu nae zeu jmive

Fluffy died because rabbits dont live long.

la flufis. mrobio .i niibo ro ractu nae zeu jmive

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Fluffy died. Thats because rabbits dont live long.

ro ractu nae zeu jmive senii lenu la flufis. mrobio ro ractu nae zeu jmive .iseniibo la flufis. mrobio

Rabbits dont live long, with the logical consequence that Fluffy died. Rabbits dont live long. Therefore, Fluffy died.

Theres a new cmavo in the last example, bo. Why? Well, a sumti tcita can indeed be used to connect sentences to other sentences, just as it is used to connect sumti into bridi (though there are only so many sumti tcita this makes sense forand this lesson contains most of them.) However, left on its own, a sumti tcita always applies to the sumti after it. So had I just said
.isenii la flufis. mrobio

that would have meant something like With the logical result of Fluffy, [something] dies. Im not quite sure what this means; maybe the something is some mythical creature that spontaneously generates bunny rabbits as it expires. But of course, this doesnt mean what we want. To make the sumti tcita apply to the entire sentence, we follow it with the word bo.
Tip: This applies to other kind of sumti tcita, by the way, like tense words. For example, .i ba bo means afterwards, then: the sentence after .i ba bo refers to something that took place later than what took place in the sentence before .i ba bo. Note: The very astute reader will have noted that afterwards should have been .i pu bo; the analogy with ba ku won out, though. (See The Complete Lojban Language, Chapter 10.12.) The rest of you may ponder what on Earth Im talking about, but need not lose sleep over it.

Vocabulary
cnita crane telgau ganlo catke

x1 [agent] shoves/pushes x2 at locus x3 x1 is directly/vertically beneath/below/under/underneath/down from x2 in frame of reference x3 x1 is anterior/ahead/forward/(in/on) the front of x2 which faces/in-frame-of-reference x3 x1 (portal/passage/entrance-way) is closed/shut/not open, preventing passage/access to x2 by x3 x1 (agent) makes x2 be a lock/seal of/on/for sealing x3 with/by locking mechanism x4 (stela lock + gasnu do)

Where necessary, insert any of je, seniibo, babo, seriabo after all but the first .i in each of the following text fragments. For example: .i mi telgau fi le vorme .i seniibo le vorme cu te telgau fi mi 1. .i mi telgau fi le vorme .i ___ do na klama le nenri 2. .i mi telgau fi le vorme .i ___ le vorme cu ganlo 3. .i mi telgau fi le vorme .i ___ mi cliva 4. .i mi viska do .i ___ do viska mi .i ___ mi rinsa do soi mi 5. .i do rinsa mi .i ___ do crane mi .i ___ do senii viska mi 6. .i la pantc. catke la djudis. .i ___ ri farlu .i ___ ri cnita

Exercise 3

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Why?

With four types of because, we can now make four types of why, simply by using ma. Our childs questions from the beginning of the lesson translate as follows:
.i carvi ria ma .i la salis. darxi mi mui ma .i la salis. te dunda lo tartcita le ctuca kiu ma .i la flufis. pu mrobio nii ma

Of course, the questions do not have to take these forms; if young Joey is a religious type, he might say la flufis. pu mrobio kiu ma, asking with what justification God took his rabbit from him, whereas if he is scientifically minded, he might ask la flufis. pu mrobio ria ma, inquiring as to the physical cause of Fluffys death. To an English-speaker, this looks back-to-front (It rains. Why?) but there is really no reason why question-words have to come at the beginning of a sentence. However, if you prefer to start with ma, you can always use the full gismu, e.g.
ma rinka lenu carvi

what? physically-causes the-event rain

And since the position of sumti tcita in the bridi is fairly free, nothing is preventing you from saying
ria ma carvi

Answers to why-questions are usually not a whole sentence but an event abstraction-sumti, following Lojbans fill-in-the-slot approach to questions and answers; e.g.
la salis. darxi mi mui ma lenu do lacpu lei kerfa

This is short for the long-winded la salis. darxi do mui lenu do lacpu lei kerfa.

Vocabulary
cevni cmoni danfu palci

manku spebio

x1 is a/the god/deity of people(s)/religion x2 with dominion over x3 [sphere]; x1 is divine x1 utters moan/groan/howl/scream [non-linguistic utterance] x2 expressing x3 (property) x1 is the answer/response/solution/[reply] to question/problem x2 x1 is dark/lacking in illumination x1 is evil/depraved/wicked [morally bad] by standard x2 x1 marries x2; x1 becomes a spouse of x2 under law/custom/tradition/system/convention x3 (speni spouse + binxo become)

Exercise 4
Translate the following questions. 1. Why did Jim marry Samantha?

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Chapter 10. Cause and Effect 2. Whys the dog barking? 3. Why is it dark in here? 4. Why is the answer 4.6? 5. Why does God allow evil?

Summary
ria

In this lesson we have looked at four gismu for cause and effect and their corresponding sumti tcita:
mui kiu nii

physical cause (rinka) motive (mukti) justification (krinu) implication (nibli)

We have also seen how sumti tcita can be converted with se and looked briefly at connecting sentences (.ije, .iseniibo.) The next lesson will look at connectives in more detail.

Vocabulary
bae carna ckasu clite lanli jubme manci

pio sanmi

se bai smaji tarti

tirna

viirkua xajmi

voksa

forethought emphasis indicator; indicates next word is especially emphasized x1 turns/rotates/revolves around axis x2 in direction x3 x1 ridicules/mocks/scoffs at x2 about x3 (property/event) by doing activity x4 (event) x1 is polite/courteous/civil in matter x2 according to standard/custom x3 x1 is a table/flat solid upper surface of material x2, supported by legs/base/pedestal x3 x1 analyzes/examines-in-detail x2 by method/technique/system x3 [process/activity] x1 feels wonder/awe/marvels about x2 used by... (sumti tcita from pilno use) x1 (mass) is a meal composed of dishes including x2 instead of... (sumti tcita from se basti is replaced) x1 (source) is quiet/silent/[still] at observation point x2 by standard x3 x1 behaves/conducts oneself as/in-manner x2 (event/property) under conditions x3 x1 hears x2 against background/noise x3; x2 is audible; (adjective:) x1 is aural x1 is a voice/speech sound of individual x2 toilet (vikmi excrete + kumfa room) x1 is funny/comical to x2 in property/aspect x3 (nu/ka); x3 is what is funny about x1 to x2

Exercise 5
Translate from Lojban. Note: On occasion, it is useful to give bits of non-Lojban in a Lojban text, leaving it in its original spelling. This could be because we dont want to distort a name too much by Lojbanising it, or because were actually inserting a phrase from another language into the text. In both cases, we have to give an unambiguous signal where the non-Lojban text finishes, and the Lojban resumes. To do this, the non-Lojban is surrounded on either side by a Lojban wordany word, as long as it doesnt occur inside the non-Lojban text. The most popular choice is gy., standing for glico English (since thats where most non-Lojban text comes from these days.) If the text is a name, it is preceded by lao instead of la. If it is a quotation, it is preceded by zoi instead of lu ... liu.

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Chapter 10. Cause and Effect 1. .i la ranjit. smaji ca lenu la suzyn. cpedu le sanmi le bevri kei kiu le nu ry. clite kei .e le nu ry. nelci le voksa be la
suzyn. kei

2. .i seria bo la djiotis. kakne lenu tirna lenu lei zutse pe le riu jubme cu tavla simxu 3. .i la djiotis. mui lenu goi cu carna fi le riu jubme 4. .i nii ku la djiotis. na zgana lenu la ranjit. tarti lenu simsa dy. kei mui le nu ckasu 5. .i la suzyn. cmila semui lenu la djiotis. carna fi sy. 6. .i cusku lu .i mo liu 7. .i la suzyn. cusku lu .i la ranjit. pu cusku lo xajmi pe lao gy. Schnberg gy. .e. lao gy. Stravinsky gy. liu 8. .i la djiotis. mui cmoni cusku zoi gy. chootio! gy.

Exercise 6
Translate into Lojban. 1. After requesting the meal, Ranjeet leaves to go to the bathroom, so he cannot hear Jyoti. 2. Jyoti talks so that she is like Ranjeet in complexity. 3. She says I shall now analyse the 47th creation (= composition) of Jimmy Bob Bach with this mirrorbecause I can. (Hint: use lao. You can come up with a word for with; look at the vocabulary list carefully...) 4. Susan laughs, since Jyoti is as funny as Ranjeet. (Hint: use mintu) 5. Jyoti says Susan, why are you talking with Ranjeet about crap? (Hint: do not use the Lojban word for excrement; the metaphor wont necessarily translate, and would be malglico. Instead, use foolishness.) 6. Susan says Because he has awesome eyes. (Hint: dont use the Lojban for have; the place structure of eye will do this for you.)

Answers to Exercises Exercise 1

1. ria, obviously. 2. mui. Even if it is a classic startle response, my fear is not a direct result of the noise, but the result of some kind of cognitive interpretation, however low-level. 3. Even the most dogmatic dialectical materialist would probably give mui here. 4. ria, since the mold cannot really be said to be motivated by the plastic wrapper, or indeed by anything. 5. I would say mui, since economics is determined by human motives, not physical laws. Note that here the x3 of mukti is not prices (jdima) but those who increase the prices: manufacturers, retailers or the government. Note: This is actually a classic example of the invisible hand phenomena so beloved of economists: the result is not an intended result of human activities, but comes about as a side-effect of them. The best sumti tcita for this is actually one we happen not to have covered here: sejae as a result of (from jalge result.)

Exercise 2
1. kiu, because at least somebody thought that it deserved an Oscar. 2. mui: the exciting story motivated me to like the book.

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Chapter 10. Cause and Effect 3. semui (an obscure example of British pub culture). 4. ria: the artificial leg physically causes him to walk in a particular way. 5. senii, even though its a logical fallacyjust because a lot of Australians like Vegemite doesnt mean that she has to. Cultural note: Vegemite is the Australian equivalent of the British Marmite; both are a salty paste that you spread on bread. Outside these two countries, nobody seems to like the stuff. Your Australian coauthor did not spend his formative years in Gods Own Country, so he never really did get a taste for it.) 6. A tricky one. You could say ria, meaning that the fact that the computer is running Linux physically prevents it from getting a virus, or you could possibly say nii, implying that it is an essential feature of Linux computers that they are immune to viruses. Computer flamebait: One can argue that Macintoshes are immune to viruses only kiu their being Macs, and not nii: they arent inherently more secure than PCs, they just havent been paid as much attention by crackers. This would of course be getting into geek wars; but we have a sneaking suspicion many of you will indeed be geeks... 7. sekiu, whether or not you actually believe in Hell or the criteria for entering it. Note also that in English and sometimes has the sense of so, which is not the case in Lojban:
do pu zergle .ije vi le daptutra do ba jelca

It is true that you committed adultery and it is also true that you will burn in Hell (literally: you past crime-copulate AND at-this-place the hell you future burn) More about the logical (and non-logical) connectives follows in the next lesson.

Exercise 3
1. seriabo: The door is not only logically preventing you from going inside; it is physically preventing you. 2. seniibo: It logically follows from the definition of lock that, if you lock a door, the door is then closed. 3. babo: there is no real causal connection between closing a door and leaving. You may be closing the door because youve finished your business there; but whos to say why you closed it, after all... 4. Either je; babo, or babo; babo. The actions dont follow from each other logically or physically. (If they follow at all, they follow by social convention; so you might have used sekiubo.) With the first pair, youre at least allowing that you saw me at the same time I saw you. With the second pair, you definitely saw me only after I saw you. 5. je; nothing. This is a syllogism like the Fluffy syllogism above; it follows from the two factsyou greeting me and you being in front of methat you have seen me. (Well, it doesnt really follow, but this is a lesson on Lojban, not logic.) So you need to join the two facts together with AND. On the other hand, the therefore is already there, as the adverbial senii; so you dont need to insert it again for the third sentence. In fact, as we discussed later on, it would join the wrong sentences together anyway... 6. seriabo; seniibo. People fall as a physical result of being pushed. The definition of fall logically requires that someone who has fallen is lower down than someone who hasnt fallen. (You dont fall upwards. Zero-gravity counterexamplesand youll make a good Lojbanist if you came up with oneare already anticipated in the x4 place of farlu!)

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Exercise 4
1. la djim. spebio la samantas. mui ma 2. le gerku ca cmoni mui ma (mui seems the best choice, since we can assume that dogs bark as a response to something, and are thus motivated rather than physically caused to bark. Note that cu is possible here instead of ca; I have used ca since it seems important that the dog is barking now.) 3. vi manku ria ma (It isnt really necessary to translate the in, since the speaker is probably inside anyway.) 4. li vopixa cu danfu nii ma (Give yourself a pat on the back if you got that one right! Numbers and mathematical problems belong to the realm of logic, not the physical world.) 5. le cevni cu curmi lenu palci kei kiu ma (kiu is best here, since a religious believer would probably look for some justification for the existence of evil, rather than a physical cause or personal motivation. Some theologians might prefer nii, I suppose! The kei is necessary because youre asking a question about the allowing, not about the evil itself.)

Exercise 5
1. Ranjeet is silent while Susan requests a meal from the carrier (= waiter), because (justification) he is polite and because he likes Susans voice. (Note the kei: only the first kei is absolutely necessary, and by now you should be able to work out why.) 2. As a (physical) result, Jyoti can hear the ones sitting at the table to the right talking to each other. (simxu takes a set as its x1; more on this in Lesson 14. le riu jubme means the table to the right: selbri can take sumti tcita and locations as tenses, just like they do time tenses.) 3. Jyoti, because (motivation) of this, turns towards the table to the right. 4. Necessarily (= with something logically causing this), Jyoti does not observe that Ranjeet behaves as resembling her in order to mock (i.e. Ranjeet is imitating her) (The logical cause in nii ku has been left out, but is presumably the previous sentence. Without the kei, the mocking would be associated with simsa rather than tartialthough theres ultimately isnt that much difference in meaning between the two. Unambiguity doesnt always buy you that much.) 5. Susan laughs, causing (motivating) Jyoti to turn to her. 6. (She) says What? 7. Susan says Ranjeet said something funny to do with Schnberg and Stravinsky. 8. Jyoti thus (motivation) groans Chootio! (Gujarati for jerk) (Like any other sumti tcita, mui can also be used as a tense.)

Exercise 6
1. .i ba lenu cpedu le sanmi kei la ranjit. cliva mui lenu klama le viirkua kei se ria lenu ry. na kakne lenu tirna la djiotis. (or: ra na kakne) 2. .i la djiotis. tavla semui lenu ri simsa la ranjit. le ka pluja 3. .i dy./le goi/la djiotis./ra cusku lu .i mi lanli le vozemoi se finti be lao gy. Jimmy Bob Bach gy. se pio le vi minra mui lenu mi kakne liu (or la djimis.bab.bax.. You could say le vozemoi se finti pe fie ..., but that would mean exactly the same thing. If the composition rather than the analysis happened with a mirror, you would say le vozemoi se finti be lao gy. Jimmy Bob Bach gy. beo ne se pio le vi minra. You could also say le vozemoi be lei se finti be ... , in which case youre either brilliant, or youve been reading ahead...)

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Chapter 10. Cause and Effect 4. .i la suzyn. cisma kiu lenu la djiotis. mintu la ranjit. le ka xajmi 5. .i la djiotis. cusku lu .i doi suzyn. mui ma do tavla la ranjit. [soi voa] loi se bebna liu (loi se bebna, the thing one is foolish in, is better here than loi nu bebna or loi ka bebna.) 6. .i lu .i lenu ry./le se goi/la ranjit./ra cu se kanla lo bae se manci liu (This is an extra-idiomatic way of saying things; kudos if you got it, dont be too worried if you didnt.)

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Chapter 11. Putting it together: Lojban connectives

All languages need ways to connect words, phrases and sentences. In English there are a host of words for this purpose: and, or, because, additionally, however, on the other hand ... the list seems endless, as foreign students of English know all too well. Lojban also has a wide variety of words like this, known as connectives, but it is more systematic about it. (Lojban also handles some of the functions of English conjunctions in other waysas we saw, because and so are translated with sumti tcita, not connectives.)

There are two types of connective: logical and non-logical. Logical connectives say something about whether and in what circumstances the two things connected are true; an example is .ije. Non-logical connectives do not deal with separate truth values, but group things together to form different kinds of units; an example is joi, which weve already seen in passing, and well be discussing again below. Moreover, Lojban distinguishes between the logical component of connectives, and their attitudinal content. For example, most languages have different words for and and but. Logically, they both mean the same thing. In terms of attitude, however, they are different: but contains a connotation of contrast or unexpectedness, which and does not. So Lojban translates but in two parts: .e kui andhowever. This follows the Lojban principle of keeping content and attitude separate as far as possible (e.g. .ui la djiotis. klama ti has a content elementthe information that Jyoti is coming here, and an attitude elementhappiness.)

In this lesson we will only look at logical connectives; non-logical connectives (with one exception) will be dealt with later, along with some other attitudinals.

Types of logical connectives

In order to understand Lojban connectives, we first need to look at logical connectives in general. The types of logical connective in Lojban are based on truth tables and are explained in detail in Chapter 14 of The Complete Lojban Language. However, if youre not a logician, this can be rather confusing, so here Ill look at them in terms of Boolean operators. If you havent a clue what a Boolean operator is, dont panic; they are very simple, and you may even have used them in an internet search without realising it. On the other hand, if youve used Boolean operators in maths or computer programming, the rest is a piece of cake. The operators we will look at here are AND, OR, EOR, IF and IFF. We have already looked at one operator: AND. A statement with AND is true if and only if both elements are true. For example, if you do an internet search for games AND strategy, the search engine will only come up with pages that contain both games and strategy: you will get pages on strategy games, for example, but not (ideally) on simulation games or military strategy. Similarly in Lojban
la flufis. ractu .ije ro ractu nae zeu jmive

is false if Fluffy is not a rabbit, or if some rabbits are long-lived. It is only true if both sentences are true.

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The next type we need to look at is OR. This is not always, or even usually, the same as the English word or. English is vague about or, which sometimes means one or the other or both, but sometimes means one or the other but not both. Compare these two sentences: 1. If its cold or rainy well stay inside. 2. The winner of the competition will receive a holiday in Hawaii or the cash equivalent.

In the first sentence common sense tells us that if it is both cold and rainy we will also stay inside. However, in the second case, the winner would have a hard time convincing the competition organisers that he/she is entitled to both the holiday and the cash. The first case is a genuine logical OR; the second is called an EOR, for exclusive or (or sometimes XORI use EOR because it reminds me of the donkey in Winnie the Pooh). You can think of OR as and/or and EOR as either/or. English has similar problems with the word if. Sentence (1) is unclear as to what will happen if it is neither cold nor rainy. We assume that in this case we will go out, but this is not necessarily the case. Strictly speaking, we might stay inside even if the weather is beautiful. In fact there are two potential meanings here: 1. IF its cold or rainy well stay inside. 2. IFF its cold or rainy well stay inside.

The first means If its cold or rainy well stay inside (but we may stay inside anyway), while the second means If and only if its cold or rainy, well stay inside (otherwise well definitely go out). Just to make the difference clear, here are some examples: Romeo loves Juliet AND Juliet loves Romeo Romeo loves Juliet OR Juliet loves Romeo

means that both statements are true, i.e. Romeo and Juliet love each other. means that one of them loves the other, and perhaps both of them do. means that either Romeo loves Juliet (but Juliet doesnt love him) or Juliet loves Romeo (but he doesnt love her). means that if Juliet loves Romeo, he definitely loves her, but he may love her anyway (the only outcome which is impossible is that Juliet loves Romeo but he doesnt love her). means that if Juliet loves Romeo, he loves her, and if she doesnt love him, he doesnt love her.

Romeo loves Juliet EOR Juliet loves Romeo

Romeo loves Juliet IF Juliet loves Romeo

Romeo loves Juliet IFF Juliet loves Romeo

The basic operators OR, AND and IFF are represented in Lojban by the vowels a, e and o.
i

is not used for logical connectives, since it is already in use as a sentence separator.

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u

is a special case, taking the logical meaning whether or notin other words, it emphasises that the second value does not affect the truth of the sentence.

The other operators, EOR and IF, are based on these vowels combined with negatives. As we shall see below, EOR is .onai and IF is .anai.
Tip: There is some controversy in the Lojban community about whether natural language if is best expressed as a logical connective (IF, IFF), or as a sumti tcita. There are a couple of strikes against IF. One is that its logical analysis, NOT A OR B, isnt terribly obvious. Another is that IFF is often what is meant, rather than IF. Yet another is that natural language if is strongly tied up with notions of causality, precondition, or deductionnone of which is particularly emphasised by IF as a strictly logical connective. For example, logical IF will give a poor rendering of Its not true that, if Im rich, Im happywhich is decidedly not the same thing as Its not true that Im either not rich or happy! For that reason, you will see many Lojbanists avoiding IF, and instead using sumti tcita like vao under conditions..., sejae results from ... happening, fau in the event of..., or nii logically caused by...

Exercise 1
In the following, work out whether the logical relationship represented by the emphasised word is closer to OR, EOR, IF, or IFF. 1. If youre naughty, I wont get you any ice cream. 2. If Jack Kennedy is the president of the United States, this must be the twentieth century. 3. If I drink too many strawberry daquiris, I get a hangover. 4. Call now for a free consultation or quote! 5. I can come up with six or seven reasons why that wont work. 6. Liechtensteins next to Switzerland or Austria or something.

Connecting sumti

The most common connective for sumti is AND. In fact weve already seen this as early as Lesson 7: .i koa .e koi xanka cmila (Jyoti and Susan laugh nervously). Heres another example:
mi ponse pa gerku .e re mlatu

I possess one dog AND two cat Ive got a dog and two cats.

This is actually a contracted way of saying It is true that I have a dog; it is true that I have two cats, or in Lojban,
mi ponse pa gerku .ije mi ponse re mlatu

Not all English sentences containing and are like this, though. Firstly, sentences like I had a bath and washed my hair are structurally different and will be dealt with later on. Secondly, I visited Ranjeet and Jyoti is slightly different from I visited Ranjeet AND I visited Jyoti. In this case, you probably want to say that you visited Ranjeet-and-Jyoti as a unit on one occasionnot that you visited Ranjeet and Jyoti on (potentially) different occasions (It is true that I visited Ranjit, and it is true that I visited Jyoti.) In this case you dont want .e (which is true but potentially misleading), but joi, which means in a mass with. So what you have is

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Chapter 11. Putting it together mi pu vitke la ranjit. joi la djiotis.

I past visit Ranjeet in-a-mass-with Jyoti I visited Ranjeet and Jyoti (together).

Youve seen joi before, too: in Lesson 5, where Marx and Engels wrote The Communist Manifesto as a joint project, rather than individually (la marks. joi la .engels. finti le guntrusio selpeicku.) This is just like the difference between le ci gerku and lei ci gerku which we looked at in Lesson 4considering the three dogs as individuals, or as a mass. Incidentally, it is not just Lojban which makes this distinction; Turkish, for example, would use ile (with) rather than ve (and) for joi here. We can also use OR here. For example,
mi ba vitke le mi mamta .a le mi tamne

I future visit the me mother OR the me cousin Ill visit my mother or my cousin.

This leaves open the possibility that I will get round to visiting both of them at some point. If I want to say that that I will visit either my mother or my cousin but not both, I need EOR. For this we use .onai. This is actually a negative IFF, which sounds confusing, but is quite simple and logical. If and only if I do not visit my cousin, I will visit my mother logically implies that, if I visit my cousin, I will not visit my mother, and vice versa; so I will visit either my mother or my cousin but not both. So we have
mi ba vitke le mi mamta .onai le mi tamne

I future visit the me mother EOR the me cousin Ill visit either my mother or my cousin.

It is probably obvious that .o means IFF, so I will visit my mother if (and only if) I visit my cousin would be mi ba vitke le mi mamta .o le mi tamne. If, for some strange reason, I want to use IF and say that I will definitely visit my mother if I visit my cousin, but I may visit her anyway, I need another negative: .anai. But since this is rare in sumti connection, Ill leave that till later.

Finally, there is .u, meaning whether or not. This is not a standard Boolean operator, but Ive called it WON for convenience. In this way I can say
mi ba vitke le mi mamta .u le mi tamne

I future visit the me mother WON the me cousin Ill visit my mother whether or not I visit my cousin.

To sum up: OR AND IFF WON IF EOR

.a .e

.o .u .anai

.onai

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Vocabulary
cinynei finpe jisra

narju patlu

nimre pelxu

rasyjukpa

x1 fancies x2 (cinse sex + nelci like) x1 is a fish of species x2 x1 is made of/contains/is a quantity of juice/nectar from-source/of-type x2 x1 is orange [color adjective] x1 is a quantity of citrus [fruit/tree, etc.] of species/strain x2 x1 is a potato [an edible tuber] of variety/cultivar x2 x1 is yellow/golden [color adjective] fry (grasu grease + jukpa cook)

Exercise 2
Express the following in Lojban. Dont try to translate the English word for word; work out what the Boolean operator is first, then work from that. 1. Susan fancies Zhang or Ranjeet, or maybe both of them. 2. I like fish and chips. 3. Request (= order) the lemon juice or the orange juice. (Hint: Build expressions for lemon and orange (the fruit) as tanru.) 4. I want the beer, whether or not I want the curry. (Hint: This is a single bridi, want!) 5. If I go from Boston to Washington, Ill go all the way to Atlanta. (Hint: This too involves a single bridi.)

Connectives in tanru

tanru have been lurking in these lessons since Lesson 2 without a proper explanation; so before

discussing connectives in tanru, its worth looking at how tanru normally work.

As weve seen before, we can put two or more words into a selbri or sumti place. An example is the aforementioned Communist manifesto, le guntrusio selpeicku.
Note: Actually, I cheated a little here; since this is the title of a specific book, not just any old manifesto, it would be better to say lae lu guntrusio selpeicku liu the-referent-of quote Communist Manifesto unquotebut that would be tedious.

Lets start with a simpler example, though.

xunre cukta

[there is a] red [type-of] book

The first element of the tanru modifies or restricts the second element, in some unspecified way. What happens if there are three or more elements, though? Like many other features of Lojban grammar, tanru follow a left-grouping rule, which means that the element on the far left modifies the next one, then those two together modify the next, and so on. For example, in a careless moment I once described The Complete Lojban Language as le barda xunre cukta since it is, indeed, big and red. However, le barda xunre cukta does not mean this; it means the {(big type-of red) type-of book} and it is hard to imagine what big type of red would mean. There are various ways to get out of the left-grouping rule when you need to; well see some in Lesson 14, but the simplest one here is to use a logical connective and say

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Chapter 11. Putting it together le barda je xunre cukta

the {(big AND red) book} The big red book.

To make a logical tanru connective, then, we simply add j to the vowel. Turning to Susans tastes in men, we can say
la suzyn. cinynei ro xajmi ja melbi nanmu

Susan fancy all {(funny OR beautiful) man} Susan fancies men who are funny or handsome (or both).

Warning
This sentence is still true even if Susan also likes men who are not funny or handsome. In natural language, social conventions means you wouldnt normally say such a sentence in that case, because it would be misleading. Lojban is stricter about these things, so you might want to add poo only (see Lesson 13), or use a relative clause: ro nanmu poi se cinynei la suzyn. cu xajmi ja melbi. Well stick with the vaguer sentences here, though.

Lets say that Susan finds the qualities of humour and good looks attractive but incompatibleshe fancies Woody Allen and Steven Seagal, but thinks a mixture of the two would be just too much. We would then say
la suzyn. cinynei ro xajmi jonai melbi nanmu

Susan fancy all {(funny EOR beautiful) man} Susan fancies men who are either funny or handsome (but not both).

On the other hand, Jyoti is turned on by funny men, and doesnt care about their looks at all. Woody Allen would do fine, but Steven Seagal wouldnt stand a chance unless he could tell a few jokes (funnier than Schwarzeneggers, preferably.) What we need here is
la djiotis. cinynei ro xajmi ju melbi nanmu

Jyoti fancy all {(funny WON beautiful) man} Jyoti fancies funny men, whether they are handsome or not.

As youll remember from last lesson, this kind of connective is also used to connect sentences, placed next to .i. So if I wanted to say Either Susan fancies funny men, or Susan fancies handsome men, I need only say
.i la suzyn. cinynei ro xajmi nanmu .ijonai la suzyn. cinynei ro melbi nanmu

Be careful not to confuse this kind of connection with sumti connectives. mi ba vitke le mi mamta .e le mi speni is not the same as mi ba vitke le mi mamta je speni. The first means that I will visit my mother and my spouse (probably on separate occasions). The second means that I will visit a person who is both my mother and my spouse, which implies that I have a really serious Oedipus complex. On the other hand, joi (and the other non-logical connectives, some of which we will see in later lessons) act as both sumti connectives and tanru connectives. Normally, Lojban grammar arranges things so that

Warning

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Chapter 11. Putting it together there is no real ambiguity between the two. However (for reasons a little too technical to go into here), if you use joi to join two sumti, and the first sumti is of the normal kind (article + selbri), you must terminate the sumti with ku. This is in order to make it explicit for any computers which might be listening that you are joining two distinct sumti, and not just two gismu inside the sumti tanru. This means you can say loi jisra joi jdacu the juice-and-water-mixture; but you have to say loi jisra ku joi loi djacu the juice and the water, considered togethernot loi jisra joi loi djacu. The difficulty in understanding such usage of joi isnt restricted to computers, by the way. Many a human will be momentarily thrown by:
lo nu xamgu xunre joi lo crino

Vocabulary
kukte

x1 is delicious/tasty/delightful to observer/sense x2 [person, or sensory activity]

Exercise 3
Translate the following from Lojban. 1. la ranjit. pinxe loi vanju jonai birje 2. la ranjit. pinxe loi vanju joi birje 3. la natraj. barja je gusta 4. da spuda ju danfu le preti 5. la jan. klama je penmi je tavla la suzyn. 6. ro prenu cu fengu naja xanka leka se xebni 7. la ranjit. nelci loi kukte ja cpina 8. mi bilga jenai kakne lenu mi klama le barja

Connecting bridi tails

Many human languagesEnglish among themdivide sentences into two parts: the subject, and the rest. In mainstream linguistic parlance, these get called the noun phrase and the verb phrase. (Weve mostly managed to avoid so far the kind of grammar talk that might have sent shivers down your spine at school. Dont worry, this wont hurt a bit...)

Now the thing about subjects is, we tend to talk about them a lot. In fact, its not unusual to string together a series of sentences, each with the same subject. From sentence to sentence, you keep saying what the same person did, or was. This means youre keeping the subject constant, and changing the rest of the sentence. This makes for an obvious shortcut: rather than repeat the same subject in two sentences, keep everything in one sentence, with a single subject, and join together the two rest-of-the-sentences. For example, why say Nick went to California. And Nick stayed there for three years, when you can join them together as Nick went to California, and stayed there for three years? Lojban, being spoken by human beings (ostensibly), is not immune to this kind of pressure. Strictly speaking, Lojban doesnt have noun phrases and verb phrases. However, it does have zero or more

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Chapter 11. Putting it together sumti in front of the selbri, and then a selbri followed by zero or more other sumti. The selbri with its trailing sumti can be considered the tail of the bridi (corresponding to the verb phrase), where the initial sumti (if any!) are its head (corresponding to the noun phrase).

Lojban allows you to join bridi-tails using a different series of logical connectives. sumti connectives start with vowels, and tanru connectives add a j in front of them. bridi-tail connectives add a gi instead. So the bridi-tail connective version of AND is gie. So what is this good for? Quite simply, you can take sentences like
.i la nik. klama la kalifornias. .ije la nik. stali la kalifornias. zea lo nanca be li ci

and change them into the much more stylish

.i la nik. klama la kalifornias. gie stali la kalifornias. zea lo nanca be li ci

or, indeed, the even more stylish (and much less like English)
.i la nik. la kalifornias. klama gie stali zea lo nanca be li ci

Youll be seeing a lot of gie in Lojban for that reason.

Note: zea as a sumti tcita? Sure, and you shouldnt be surprised at this by now. Anything that can be used as a tense can be used as a sumti tcita, and vice versa. Since zea as a tense specifies duration, as a sumti tcita it introduces the duration of the bridi. So it corresponds precisely to for in English.

Vocabulary
bruna dunli gunta jatna kratrsenatore misno

jikca

mansa

slabu speni tinbe vlipa

nupre

x1 is brother of/fraternal to x2 by bond/tie/standard/parent(s) x3; [not necess. biological] x1 is equal/congruent to/as much as x2 in property/dimension/quantity x3 x1 (person/mass) attacks/invades/commits aggression upon victim x2 with goal/objective x3 x1 is captain/commander/leader/in-charge/boss of vehicle/domain x2 x1 interacts/behaves socially with x2; x1 socializes with/is sociable towards x2 x1 is a senator representing x2 in senate x3 x1 satisfies evaluator x2 in property (ka)/state x3 x1 (person/object/event) is famous/renowned/is a celebrity among community of persons x2 (mass) x1 (agent) promises/commits/assures/threatens x2 (event/state) to x3 [beneficiary/victim] x1 is old/familiar/well-known to observer x2 in feature x3 (ka) by standard x4 x1 is married to x2; x1 is a spouse of x2 under law/custom/tradition/system/convention x3 x1 obeys/follows the command/rule x2 made by x3; (adjective:) x1 is obedient x1 has the power to bring about x2 under conditions x3; x1 is powerful in aspect x2 under x3

Combine the following pairs of Lojban sentences into a single sentence. Get as many common sumti as possible into the bridi-head. Use conversion liberally. 1. .i la djak.kenedis. jatna le merko .i la djak.kenedis. bruna la rabyrt.kenedis. 2. .i la djak.kenedis. speni la djaklin.buvier. .i la djak.kenedis. se catra la lis.xarvis.azuald. 3. .i la djak.kenedis. nupre lenu lo merko cu cadzu le lunra .i la nasas. tinbe fi la djak.kenedis.

Exercise 4

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Chapter 11. Putting it together 4. .i la djak.kenedis. tavla fi la kubas. .i la djak.kenedis. gunta la kubas. 5. .i la djak.kenedis. mansa lei merko leka vlipa .i la djak.kenedis. ckasu la nikitas.xrucTCOF. leka vlipa 6. .i la djak.kenedis. sutra tavla .i la djak.kenedis. na denpa 7. .i la djak.kenedis. jikca la MErilin.monROS. .i la djak.kenedis. djuno leduu la MErilin.monROS. misno 8. .i mi la djak.kenedis. se slabu .i la djak.kenedis. pu pendo mi .i do doi kratrsenatore na dunli la djak.kenedis.

Asking about connectives

How can you tell someone is a computer programmer?

You ask them Do you want milk or sugar?, and they answer Yes.

In natural languages, that kind of answer is liable to get you a clip around the ears. That is because natural languages are run not only by logic, but also by social conventions. And one of the most important social conventions about language (Gricean informativeness, for those taking third year linguistics courses) is that, whatever you say, you should say enough to fully inform your listener about whats going on. If I ask Do you want milk or sugar?, I need that information in order to prepare you a cup of coffee to your liking. Answering me yes doesnt give me much to go on.

As far as strict logic is concerned, though, Yes is the only proper answer, as computer programmers (and logicians, and Lojbanists) discover much to their amusementand to the irritation of the rest of the world. That is because the question is phrased as a yes/no question; and OR, in the question, does not behave any differently as a logical connective than AND. (Yes is an appropriate answer to Do you want milk and sugar? Of course, now its No which is not helpful as an answer.) The same holds for Lojban, of course: .i xu do djica lenu jmina loi ladru .a loi sakta is a yes/no-question, and the only proper answers are .i goi and .i na goi. What you should actually be asking, if you want to be logically correct, is Identify which of the following you want: milk, sugar. You could say that, but its not much like Lojbans fill-in-the-slot approach. Instead, Lojban sneakily asks you to fill in a slot you might not have expected: not the milk slot, or the sugar slot, but the connective slot:
.i do djica lenu jmina loi ladru ji loi sakta

You want to add milk ___ sugar.

By filling in the slot, you get to pick what you want. If you say .e, you are saying the sentence .i do djica lenu jmina loi ladru .e loi saktain other words, you want both. If you say .enai, you are using the AND NOT connective, which negates what follows it: so you are saying I want milk, and not sugar. If you want to negate what went before the connective instead, you use na.e. (You can negate what goes before any connective by putting na in front of it.) So if you answer na.e, you are saying I want not milk, and sugar (or, as is more usual in English, not milk, but sugar)which means that you are picking only sugar. If you want neither, you can negate both sides: na.enai. You can still be unhelpful with your response: .a would leave us right where we started, for instance. But at least this way you have a logically consistent way of picking alternatives presented to you.
Tip: Be careful, though: this kind of question doesnt really generalise past two alternatives, so you may still have to fall back on the pick zero or more alternatives out of the following approach.

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You can ask questions in the same way about the other kinds of connectives we have looked at. The connective interrogative for tanru is jei, and the connective interrogative for bridi-tails is gii.

Vocabulary
stali spita tadni

x1 is a hospital treating patient(s) x2 for condition/injuries/disease/illness x3 x1 remains/stays at/abides/lasts with x2 x1 studies/is a student of x2; x1 is a scholar; (adjective:) x1 is scholarly

Exercise 5
Answer these questions in Lojban. 1. .i la ranjit. penmi la suzyn. vi le barja ji le spita 2. .i la djiotis. stali le barja gii klama le gusta 3. .i la jan. tadni loi xumske gii nelci loi dotco birje 4. .i la djiotis. pendo la lis.xarvis.azuald. ji la ranjit. 5. .i la suzyn. nelci loi dotco jei fraso birje (Hint: Just as you thought: you have no idea whether Susan likes French beer or not. You should still be able to come up with a connective that reflects that.)

Summary

In this lesson, we have covered: Lojban logical connectives (AND, OR, EOR, WON, IF, IFF) Non-logical connectives (joi) connectives (.a, .e, .o, .u, .onai, .anai) connectives (gia, gie, gio, giu, gionai, gianai)

sumti tanru

bridi-tail

connectives (ja, je, jo, ju, jonai, janai)

Asking questions about logical connectives (ji, jei, gii)

Vocabulary
bakni cidjrkebabi djacu fange jipci

lanme pencu sabji spaji nanba

jui kensa

sluni

zdile

x1 is a cow/cattle/kine/ox/[bull/steer/calf] [beef-producer/bovine] of species/breed x2 x1 is a kebab (Yet another one of those funny-shaped words...) x1 is made of/contains/is a quantity/expanse of water; (adjective:) x1 is aqueous/[aquatic] x1 is alien/foreign/[exotic]/unfamiliar to x2 in property x3 (ka) x1 is a chicken/[hen/cock/rooster]/small fowl [a type of bird] of species/breed x2 Pay Attention! Followed by the name of the person; same grammar as doi and coi (selmao COI) x1 is outer space near/associated with celestial body/region x2 x1 is a sheep/[lamb/ewe/ram] of species/breed x2 of flock x3 x1 is a quantity of/contains bread [leavened or unleavened] made from grains x2 x1 (agent) touches x2 with x3 [a locus on x1 or an instrument] at x4 [a locus on x2] x1 (source) provides/supplies/furnishes x2 [supply/commodity] to x3 [recipient] x1 is a quantity of/contains onions/scallions of type/cultivar x2 x1 (event/action abstract) surprises/startles/is unexpected [and generally sudden] to x2 x1 (abstract) is amusing/entertaining to x2 in property/aspect x3; x3 is what amuses x2 about x1

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Exercise 6
Translate from Lojban. 1. .i le bevri cu klama le jubme pe le ci pendo gie cusku lu .i do djica lenu do citka ma liu 2. .i la ranjit. cusku lu .i do ca sabji le mo cidjrkari ja cidjrkebabi liu 3. .i le bevri cu cusku lu .i lanme ja bakni ja jipci liu 4. .i la ranjit. cu cusku lu .i mi djica lo bakni cidjrkari .e lo sluni nanba liu 5. .i le bevri fi la djiotis. cu dunda fe loi djacu gie cusku fe lu .i do djica ma liu 6. .i la djiotis cusku lu .i lo cidjrkari liu 7. .isekiubo le bevri cu cusku lu .i lanme jei bakni liu 8. .i la djiotis. cusku lu .i naje liu

Exercise 7
Translate into Lojban. 1. The waiter turns to Susan, smiles, and says Lamb or beef? 2. Susan either didnt hear the waiter, or didnt pay attention to him. 3. Jyoti touches Susan on the shoulder and says Hey, Susan? 4. Susan is surprised, and says Um... Chicken. 5. Jyoti says Hope you enjoyed travelling through outer spacewhether or not you met any aliens. (Use an attitudinal for Hope.)

Answers to exercises Exercise 1

1. IFF. In English, we expect that IFF is what is meant, anyway; but a very legalistic (and horridly mean) parent can still say I said I wouldnt get you ice cream if you were naughty; I never said Id get you ice cream if you were nice. Thats because if in English logically means IF, and only conventionally means the stronger IFF. This conventional kind of meaning goes by the name of implicature; and implicature has always been something of an issue in Lojban, since humans expect it, but its not really anything to do with logic. 2. Definitely IF: If Calvin Coolidge is president, its still the twentieth century. 3. IF. If this was IFF, the relation would be symmetrical, so you should be able to say If I get a hangover, Ive drunk too many strawberry daquiris. But daquiris arent the only way to get a hangover, so this doesnt follow. 4. The reputable members of the business community who say this kind of thing will hardly begrudge you a quote if youve already called for a consultation; so this is OR. 5. EOR: You may be being imprecise, but youre not being nonsensicalthe number of reasons you can come up with cant be both six and seven. 6. OR: As it turns out, its next to both. (Nick met some people from Liechtenstein once, actually. They found the name of their capital hilarious...)

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Exercise 2
1. la suzyn. cinynei la jan. .a la ranjit. 2. mi nelci loi finpe ku joi loi se rasyjukpa patlu (or any reasonable facsimile thereof: loi patlu poi se rasyjukpa, loi rasyjukpa patlu, or anything of the sort.)
.e is possible, but joi is better, since we are probably talking about fish and chips together. (.ui this is an example of a Sapir-Whorf effect; if more British people had been involved in the design of Lojban, there would be a gismu for chips.)

As it turns out, the ku is obligatory there; see the warning in the section on tanru connectives. 3. ko cpedu le pelxu nimre jisra .onai le narju nimre jisra (When you order your beverage, you are not normally expected to order more than one.) 4. mi djica le birje .u le cidjrkari 5. mi klama la .uacintyn .o la .atlantas. la bastn. (Yes, this was meant to be tricky. In particular, it involves IFF rather than IF, since to get from Boston to Atlanta, you would likely go via Washington. So you cannot go to Atlanta without going to Washington, and youve just said you wont go to Washington without going to Atlanta.) Tip: We did say that a Lojban cmene cannot contain la (as we mentioned way back in Lesson 1); otherwise it would break up into two names. So la malakais. would break up into the admittedly nonsensical la ma la kais.. However, when there is a consonant in front of the la inside the cmene, the bit before the la would itself be a cmene. Since cmene end in pauses, if theres no pause, then this is a single cmene. In other words, la .atlantas. is in fact OK, because, if it did fall apart, it would fall apart into la .at. la ntas. At, Ntasand youd need those pauses for it to really fall apart like that. Without any such pauses, la .atlantas. is still treated as a single word.

Exercise 3
1. Ranjeet drinks something which is either wine or beer. 2. Ranjeet drinks wine mixed with beer (.aunai) 3. Natraj is a bar and restaurant (i.e. a bistro, or a licensed restaurant.) 4. x is a response, whether or not it is an answer to the question. 5. Zhang goes up to, meets, and talks to Susan. This might lead you to ask what the place structure of a tanru is. The answer is, it is the place structure of its final gismuhowever it is connected with the rest of the tanru. 6. All people are, if angry, then anxious about being hated. 7. Ranjeet likes tasty or spicy things. (The normal implication in English, made explicit in Lojban, is to add or both. This is an implicature, as described in Exercise 1.) 8. I should but cannot go to the bar. (Not a typo: .enai builds a new connective, AND NOT, since what follows it gets negated.)

Exercise 4
1. .i la djak.kenedis. jatna le merko gie bruna la rabyrt.kenedis. Jack Kennedy was leader of America and brother of Robert Kennedy.

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Chapter 11. Putting it together 2. .i la djak.kenedis. speni la djaklin.buvier. gie se catra la lis.xarvis.azuald. Jack Kennedy was married to Jacquelin Bouvier and killed by Lee Harvey Oswald. 3. .i la djak.kenedis. nupre lenu lo merko cu cadzu le lunra kei gie te tinbe fi la nasas. Jack Kennedy promised that an American would walk on the moon, and was obeyed by NASA. (The conversion works out in putting Kennedy as the x1 of both bridi.) 4. .i la djak.kenedis. tavla fi la kubas. gie gunta la kubas. Jack Kennedy talked about Cuba and attacked Cuba. (You cant get Cuba into the bridi-head, because its in different places in the two bridi: x4 in the first bridi, x2 in the second.) 5. .i la djak.kenedis fi leka vlipa cu mansa fe lei merko gie ckasu fe la nikitas.xrucTCOF. Jack Kennedy, as regards power, satisfied the Americans, and mocked Nikita Khrushchev. (Tricky, tricky, I know. The x1 and x3 are the same; so with some clever usage of fiand fe, so that the next sumti doesnt get taken for x4this can be made to work.) 6. .i la djak.kenedis. sutra tavla gie na denpaor equivalently, .i la djak.kenedis. sutra tavla gienai denpa Jack Kennedy talked fast and didnt pause. 7. .i la djak.kenedis jikca la MErilin.monROS. gie djuno leduu la MErilin.monROS. misno Jack Kennedy socialised with Marilyn Monroe and knew that Marilyn Monroe was famous. (Marilyn isnt in the same place in the two bridi: shes in x2 in the first bridi, but in a sumti within an abstraction in x2 in the second bridi.) 8. .i la djak.kenedis. slabu mi gie pu pendo mi gie na/gienai se dunli do doi kratrsenatore Jack Kennedy was familiar to me and was my friend, and is not equalled by you, senator. (If it wasnt for the third sentence, you could have fit the mi into the bridi-head. The original text, famously spoken by Lloyd Bentsen to Dan Quayle in the 1988 American Vice-Presidential debate, is: I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, youre no Jack Kennedy.)

Exercise 5
1. .enai (Does Ranjeet meet Susan at the bar or the hospital?) 2. nagie (Does Jyoti stay at the bar or go to the restaurant?) 3. gie, because he does both. (Does Zhang study chemistry or like German beer?) 4. na.ein all likelihood. (Is Jyoti is a friend of Lee Harvey Oswalds or of Ranjeets?) 5. naju. Think about it... (Does Susan like German or French beer?)

Exercise 6
1. The waiter goes to the three friends table and says What would you like to eat? 2. Ranjeet says What curries or kebabs are you serving now? (Theres no reason you cant use mo in a tanru. As usual, this asks for the listener to fill in the blank. The way Lojban works, mo cidjrkari ja cidjrkebabi is interpreted as mo {cidjrkari ja cidjrkebabi}in other words, mo} applies to both cidjrkari and cidjrkebabi. There is more on the structure of tanru in Lesson 14.) 3. The waiter says Lamb, beef or chicken. (That is to say, the sentence We serve x curries and kebabs is true for x being lamb OR beef, OR chicken. This means that the waiter has come up with a new kind of animal, a LambOR-Cow-OR-Chicken; but of course, that description fits any one of a lamb, a cow or a chicken, so what the waiter has said does make sense.) 4. Ranjeet says I want a beef curry and an onion bread. 5. The waiter gives Jyoti water and says to her What would you like? (Whatever is in front of the first selbri gets repeated in front of the second; so this is the same as saying le bevri fi la djiotis. cu dunda fe loi djacu .i je le bevri fi la djiotis. cu cusku fe lu .i do djica ma liu.)

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Chapter 11. Putting it together 6. Jyoti says A curry. 7. For that reason, the waiter says Lamb or beef? 8. Jyoti says Not A but B (or, in English, Beef.)

Exercise 7
1. .i le bevri cu carna fi la suzyn. gie cisma gie cusku lu .i lanme jei bakni liu 2. .i la suzyn. tirna le bevri gionai jundi le bevri (or: .i la suzyn. tirna le bevri gionai jundi ri) 3. .i la djiotis pencu la suzyn. le janco gie cusku lu .i jui .suzyn. liu 4. .i la suzyn. se spaji gie cusku lu .i .y. jipci liu (Not one of the alternatives the waiter presented, so she couldnt very well answer with a connective.) 5. .i la djiotis. cusku lu .i .ao do se zdile lenu do litru le kensa kei giu penmi lo fange (If you left out the kei, the giu will attach to litru rather than se zdile, which gives a slightly different meaning. As it turns out, though, both would be acceptable renderings of the English.)

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Chapter 12. Aspect, Vocatives, Loan Words, and Equalities

This lesson is something of a mixed bag. In it, we cover four topics which are fairly important in Lojban, each of which kind of fits somewhere elsebut would take us far afield in each of the other lessons. Aspects are a special kind of tense; vocatives are a special kind of attitudinal; loan words are a way of introducing new words into Lojban, comparable to lujvo; and equalities involve a special kind of selbri.

Aspect

Weve seen that we can locate our bridi in space and time, by using tenses. But this is something of a simplification. We cant just say that events are before, simultaneous with, or after other events, because events have beginnings, middles and ends. They are not simply points that can be lined up on a timeline. And we tend to be very interested in the beginnings and ends of events. There is quite a difference between these three sentences:

Is he about to do his homework? Is he still doing his homework? Has he done his homework yet?

Doing homework is an activity that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. So when we pinpoint the time at which doing homework happens, we are also pinpointing its beginning, its middle, and its end. Which means that the first of those questions asks whether the time is before the beginning of doing the homework, or after it. The second question asks whether or not the time is in the middle of doing the homework. And the third question asks whether the time is after the end of doing the homework, or not.

The term in linguistics for situating the beginnings and ends of events is aspect. The term Lojban uses is event contours: events are perceived as shapes, which have beginnings and ends. (This is why Lojban can use its aspects in space as well as time, although we wont be going into that here.) In many languages, aspect is as important as tense, or even more important. In Russian, to use the best-known example, you cannot use a verb at all without choosing between a stem indicating that something is (or was, or will be) still going on (imperfective), and a stem indicating that something is (or was, or will be) completed (perfective). English isnt like that: you can quite often leave off any indication of aspect in your verbs. Yet English has ways of expressing aspect anyway. When we say I have spoken to the doctor, we are also indicating that we have now finished doing sowe are after the end of the event. When we say I am speaking to the doctor, on the other hand, we are also indicating that we are in middle of the event: the event is continuing, and is not yet over.

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Chapter 12. Aspect, Vocatives, etc. Note: Aspect is quite independent of tense: you can say that something will be over some time in the future (I will have spoken to the doctor [by then]), or that something was continuing in the past (I was speaking to the doctor), without giving any indication of what is happening in the here-and-now.

Lojban uses cmavo belonging to selmao ZAhO to express event contours. You use them just like tense words; if you use both, the tense word goes first. The three-way distinction we madebefore the beginning, in the middle, after the endis made with three distinct words: puo, cao, bao. This is, of course, no coincidence: before (pu) an event begins, you use puo; after (ba) an event ends, you use bao. So you can come up with sentences like these: I have spoken to the doctor (or had spoken, or will have spoken) I am speaking to the doctor (or was speaking, or will be speaking)
mi puo tavla le mikce mi cao tavla le mikce mi bao tavla le mikce

I am about to speak to the doctor (or was about to speak, or will be about to speak)
mi pu puo tavla le mikce mi ba bao tavla le mikce

I was about to speak to the doctor I will have spoken to the doctor I had spoken to the doctor I was speaking to the doctor
mi pu cao tavla le mikce mi pu bao tavla le mikce

Vocabulary
fekpre troci

insane, crazy person (fenki crazy + prenu person) x1 tries/attempts/makes an effort to do/attain x2 (event/state/property) by actions/method x3

Exercise 1
Translate into Lojban. 1. I will be on the verge of going insane. 2. Im done reading the book. 3. Jyotis still on her way to the restaurant. 4. Ranjeet was eating his curry. 5. Susan was to have been with us, but she had to stay at the bar. 6. Id gone to the hospital before you tried to talk to me.

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More Aspects

The aspects puo and bao describe situations in which the event is still not going on, or is no longer going on: if you draw a time-line, they are outside of the line corresponding to the event. But beginnings and endings are pretty conspicuous, as moments go. So we often want to point out that we are not before the beginning of the event, but right at the point when it begins; and not after the end of the event, but right at the point when it ends.

To pinpoint your time at the instant when the event begins, the aspect word you use is coa. So you can say mi coa tcidu le cukta at the moment when you start reading a book. When you stop reading the book, the aspect is cou. When you finish reading, on the other hand, the word to use is mou. So Lojban makes a distinction between finishing and stopping (before the event would have finished normally).

For this kind of aspect, English normally just uses verbs: start, finish, stop. Lojban likewise allows you to use distinct selbri to express these notions: cfari, mulno, and sisti. Using aspects just lets you express things more succinctly; and with Lojban the way it is, anything that makes things more succinct comes in handy. There are more aspects in Lojban, though you wont necessarily see them as often in Lojban text; you can find out about them in Chapter 10.10 of The Complete Lojban Language.

Exercise 2
Some of you may be familiar with the puzzles Wheres Waldo? and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?. Well now were going to play a little game of la jan. zvati ma. For each of these sentences, say where Zhang is, given the aspect expressed. Youre allowed to say Between A and B in your answer. For example:
.i la jan. cao klama la paRIS. la li,ON. Zhang is between Paris and Lyon.

Watch out for strange Lojbanisations of names! 1. .i la jan. coa klama la sankt.PEterspurg. la myskFAS. 2. .i la jan. bao klama la minxen. la keln. 3. .i la jan. mou klama la firentses. la veNEtsi,as. 4. .i la jan. cou klama la cai,en. la nolinz. 5. .i la jan. puo klama la canXAIS. la guanJOUS. 6. .i la jan. cao stali le barja.

Vocatives

When you address people by name, you usually do so to make it clear who out of a group you are talking to. Weve already seen how to do that in Lojban: doi, followed by the name (without the name article, la.) So Houston, we have a problem ends up as
doi xustyn. mia se nabmi

(sidestepping the slight illogicality of speaking to a single person in Houston but addressing a whole city.)

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Often, however, we address people in order to manage our conversations: to make someone pay attention to our turn; to butt in before it is our turn; to signal that a conversation is beginning or ending; and so on. We can also do this without using names, but instead by various context cues and all-purpose words. When you think about it, for example, OK does a lot of work for such a small word.

As we know, Lojban tends to be precise rather than vague. So when it comes to signalling what you want done with a conversation, Lojban doesnt play along with the usual natural language tricks of leaving it up to the principles of politeness and social convention to work out whats going on. Instead, it has explicit words for managing turns in a conversation, which can optionally be followed by the name of whoever youre bringing it to the attention of. Since all these words address someone, they are called vocatives (selmao COI.) Natural languages dont distinguish as carefully between these various contexts, except in fairly artificial contexts: for example, conversations over two-way radio, where it is impossible to talk over each other, or to negotiate whose turn it is to speak through subtle visual cues. (A less elaborate vocabulary is in place for IRC, its Internet equivalent.) This means that Lojban vocatives look a little like a CB enthusiasts nightmare, because the glosses you see for them come from this more explicit subset of English. But normal English has these kinds of words as welltheyre just not as clearly distinguished, because context is usually relied on instead. Weve slipped some of these past you already, too.
mie coi

is the word you use to introduce yourself: its the only vocative followed by the speakers name, rather than the addressees. So mie .robin. means Im Robin or This is Robin speaking. is the greeting word: it corresponds to Hello, Good morning, Hi, Wazzup?, and whatever else happens to be in vogue.

Conversely, coo is the farewell word, corresponding to Goodbye, Farewell, Yo Later Dude, and so on. Lojbanists signing off on e-mail often end with something like coomie .robin.this is equivalent to putting your name at the end of your email in English as a signature, and translates as Goodbye; Im Robin.

The other vocatives are not as common.

jee

Two words similar to coi are jui Hey!, with which you draw someones attention, and fii Welcome! At your service!, with which you offer hospitality or a service. (Its what you say to a visitor; you wouldnt say it over the phone, for instance, unless your addressee is calling from the airport and is on their way over.)

corresponds to Roger! in radio-speak, and right or uh-uh in normal English: it confirms that youve received a message. If you havent, you say jeenai instead (of course); in normal English, that would be Beg your pardon? or Huh?. In case you havent received the message clearly, you can explicitly ask for the speaker to repeat whatever they said with keo.

Similarly, bee signals a request to send a message (Hello? Are you there?), and rei indicates that you are ready (Lojban bredi) to receive a message. (Its what you say when you pick up the phone which in English also happens to be Hello?, but in Italian is Pronto Ready!.)

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muo

is what you say when you explicitly make it another speakers turn to speak: its the Over! of radio. When it isnt your turn to speak, but you want to barge in anyway, you can say taathough it probably wont make anyone any happier that youre interrupting. acknowledges a request, and promises to carry it out: in radio talk this is Wilco!, and in normal English OK or All right, I will (or for that matter, Consider it done!)

nue vio

introduces a promise; peu introduces a request, and so is fairly similar to the attitudinal .eo.

You say Thank you with kieto which the appropriate response is not fii (Youre welcome doesnt mean youre being visited by some guests), but the simple acknowledgement jee. Finally, to close communication (radios Over and out!), you can use feo. (This is what people actually should be putting at the end of their e-mails; but its not as well-known a word as coo)

Vocatives take names, sumti or selbri. The names come after an obligatory pause, to make sure any eavesdropping computers dont misconstrue the vocative as one long name. The sumti or selbri describes the addressee (e.g. coo la mensi or coo mensi Goodbye, sister!.) If any of these are used, they normally dont need terminators after them. If you use the vocative on its own, however, you will need a terminator, because the things likeliest to follow the vocative in a sentence could easily be misconstrued as describing your addressee. The terminator for vocatives is dou. For example,
coi dou la suzyn. la ranjit. puzi cliva

Hello! Susans just left Ranjeet.

coi la suzyn. la ranjit. puzi cliva

Hello, Susan! Ranjeets just left.

Exercise 3
Give the Lojban vocatives corresponding to the emphasised words in each of the following sentences. You may need to add nai to your vocatives. Beware of trick questions! 1. Jyoti, are you there? Just a second! 2. Come on in, Zhang, make yourself at home! Much obliged! 3. Youre coming along, right? Come again? 4. Excuse me, is this seat taken? Be my guest!

Loan words

You got a brief taste of lujvo in Lesson 8. As we said there, lujvo are the main way of introducing new wordsmore precisely, new brivlainto Lojban. The most important thing about lujvo is that, as selbri, they are meant to have very well-defined place structures; and there are guidelines in place for deriving them (see The Complete Lojban Language, Chapter 12.) So, particularly when the concept you want to express is verb-like (that is, when its likely to have sumti of its own), lujvo are preferred. There are some cases, though, when you do have to borrow a word from another language, creating a loan word (called in Lojban a fuivla). This can be because the thing youre talking about is very concrete or particular, and/or because the reference is quite culture-specific. In either case, it would be

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really cumbersome to describe it with a combination of gismu. (For example, how would you come up with a description for brie? Or rock n roll?which, we should point out, you would have to keep distinct from the later musical genre of rock!)

The problem with borrowing words into Lojban is, Lojban has a quite thorough set-up for working out what the words are in a stream of letters. This means that most words you import into Lojban (once you spell them in Lojban letters) are likely to mean something else already. For example, if I want to bring the word Esperanto into Lojban, the last thing I want to do is start saying .esperanto. That will get analysed as .e speranto, which is something like and marriage-soft.
Note: Well, it would be if soft was ranto instead of rantibut the point should still be clear: importing words exactly as they are would lead to confusion and havoc.

The sanctioned way to deal with loan-words (described in more detail in The Complete Lojban Language, Chapter 4.7) is to stick a gismu (minus its final letter) in front of the word, showing what sort of thing the word is; and to put an r (or, if an r is already there, an n) between the gismu and the word. The gismu helps the reader or listener, who has likely never seen this word before, guess what the word might be. This is particularly handy if the source word might be ambiguous between two different meanings. And the combination of gismu minus final vowel, source word (which should start with a consonant, and end with a vowel), and r or n will hopefully produce a cluster of consonants crunchy enough that it cannot be mistaken for another Lojban word or phrase.
Tip: There is no standard consonant to put in front of the word to become a fuivla if it starts with a vowel. Two popular choices are x and n. Similarly, there is no set convention on where to get the vowel from, if your word ends in a consonant. In these lessons, well just repeat the preceding vowel; e.g. England gugdrninglanda (from gugde country.)

So what does all this look like in practice? Well, weve already seen curry:

take food, cidj[a];

take the word in Lojban garb (starting with a consonant and ending with a vowel), kari; and wedge them together with an r: cidjrkari.

(The consonant cluster is also crunchy enough to be difficult to pronounce; the r is a syllable on its own, and the word should sound something like shidgerrrrrkari.)

Loan words (in Lojban, fuivla) are still only sporadically usedparticularly because, as of this writing at least, there is no Lojban dictionary where a standard list of them can be looked up. The problem of which language to borrow words from is also hard to settle, and the choices made can cause problems of their own. The most international solution for plant and animal names, for example, is Latin, and in particular the Latin of the Linnaean system of classification. But this means that, to come up with a word for catnip, say, you have to know Latin and your Linnaean taxonomy. (Or, like I did, look it up on the Internetbut you cant normally do that while youre having a conversation.) So fuivla are still largely unexplored terrain in Lojban.
Note: That said, you will occasionally see Stage 4 fuivla in use. The fuivla weve seen are Stage 3; in Stage 4, you drop the initial crunchy rafsi, reasoning that the word should already be well-known or recognisable enoughand making sure that the word still doesnt look like a normal brivla. (For example,

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Chapter 12. Aspect, Vocatives, etc. The Complete Lojban Language suggests tciile for Chile, instead of gugdrtcile.) Not everyone likes them, so theyre not yet all that common, and youll usually get plenty of warning if someone is using them. P.S.: If you were wondering, by the way: cirlrbri, zgiknroknrolo, zgiknroko.

Turn these words into fuivla, using the gismu supplied as the prefix. For example: Mummy/Mommie: mamta mamtrmami. 1. Cockney: bangu 2. Pizza: cidja 3. Derivative: cmaci 4. Adagio: zgike 5. Psychopathy: bilmi 6. Deuterium: cidro 7. Amethyst: jemna 8. Rallentando: zgike

Exercise 4

Equalities

You may at some stage have asked yourself the question, what the Lojban for is is. The short answer is, most of the time there isnt one. Lojban represents the world in terms of relations (bridi), and is is a fairly empty kind of relation. Moreover, if the thing to the right of is (the predicate, in grammar terminology) means a class of things, instead of a single entity, then it corresponds to a selbri, and we dont need to put a word for is in. So Robin is English comes out in Lojban as la robin. glico: glico is already a selbri that takes la robin. as a sumtiso we dont need a separate selbri for is. Very, very, very occasionally, youll need a Lojban word for is anyway. Lojban offers three words which sort of do the job of is; each has its own provisos.

The first word is me. me takes a sumti following it, and converts it into a selbri. So me la nik. is a selbri, which takes as a sumti anything that is a Nick. Similarly, since le mi ci mensi is my three sisters, la renas. me le mi ci mensi means Rena is one of my three sisters (as she is described by the selbri version of my three sisters.) So me is best thought of as meaning is one of.
Historical note: me, way back in the dawn of (Lojbanic) time, used to mean pertaining to instead of is. Youll see confusion between the two persisting among old timers. Be gentle with them, we pray you...

The second word is du. du is a selbri on its own, and it means that all its sumti are the same thing and have the same identity. So mi du la nik. (or mi du la robin.) is a way of saying I am Robin (or Nick.) The claim made is one of identity; so you can flip the sumti around without making any difference: la robin. du mi. It does not make a sumti behave like a selbri, so du cannot mean is one of, like me does: la renas. du le mi ci mensi makes the nonsensical claim that Rena is my three sisters. (Or should that be are?)

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Chapter 12. Aspect, Vocatives, etc. Tip: Can you say mi du lo prenu, doing the Lojban equivalent of making an indefinite noun equal a definite noun? After all, lo prenu applies to many more people in the world than just me, so du here does kind of act like is one of. The answer is, yes you can, because in this context they both do refer to the same person. (In strict logical terms: there is at least one person such that that person is me.) This is frowned upon in Lojban in general, though, because its misleading: du tends to be reserved for mathematical equality, and for claiming that two different names (or definite nouns) refer to the same thing. If you really wanted to say mi du lo prenu, after all, why wouldnt you just say mi prenu?

These two means are grammatical Lojban, but they are viewed with some distaste, and are usually giveaways that some poor translating from English (or another natural language) has been going on. The third mechanism is better regarded, because it tucks the equality away in an inconspicuous corner. pou has the same grammar as the sumti modifiers like pe and po we saw in Lesson 3. But instead of claiming that one sumti is associated with the other, or owned by the other, pou claims that the two sumti are the same thing. So:
la ranjit. pou le pendo be la djiotis. vi zvati

Ranjeet, who is Jyotis friend, is here.

Like those other members of selmao GOI (pe, po and poe), pou has a non-restrictive version: nou. So if I was saying that Ranjeet was Jyotis friend, not to distinguish him from the other Ranjeets you might know, but just for your information, I should use nou instead of pou. You can think of nou as tantamount to noi du, and pou as tantamount to poi du.
Note: nou and pou are typically used in Lojban to introduce alternate names for something; so they correspond to English namely, i.e. For instance, la suzyn. penmi la xumske fanza ku nou la jan. Susan met Chemistry Annoyance, namely Zhang.

Vocabulary
xadba

x1 is exactly/approximately half/semi-/demi-/hemi- of x2 by standard x3

du, pou, and nou. To get pou and nou to work, you may have to rearrange the sentences. For instance:

Where appropriate (and only where appropriate), translate is in each of the following sentences with each one of me,

Exercise 5

x, which is [equal to] y, is a number.

da noi me de cu namcu da noi du de namcu da nou de namcu

1. Jyoti is a woman. 2. Jyoti and Susan are the two women who went in Jyotis car. 3. Jyoti and Susan are among the women whom Zhang considers his friends. (Use jinvi.) 4. Ranjeet, who is a friend of Jyoti, is half-German. 5. This blue car which is the one to the right of mine is a Ford car. (Use le pritu for the one to the right.)

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Summary

In this lesson, we have covered: Vocatives (DOI, COI) Loan words Simple aspects (puo, cao, bao; coa, coo, mou)

Words expressing equality (me, du, pou, nou)

Vocabulary
banli casnu cladu cradi banxa

jia laediu mau sanga smagau ticygau

dukse

zmadu

voksa

zgikrfanki

x1 is great/grand in property x2 (ka) by standard x3 x1 is a bank owned by/in banking system x2 for banking function(s) x3 (event) x1(s) (mass normally, but 1 individual/jou possible) discuss(es)/talk(s) about topic/subject x2 x1 is loud/noisy at observation point x2 by standard x3 x1 broadcasts/transmits [using radio waves] x2 via station/frequency x3 to [radio] receiver x4 x1 is an excess of/too much of x2 by standard x3 additionally, also the content of the previous sentence (that, as in I knew that!) sumti tcita: exceeded by... (from zmadu more) x1 sings/chants x2 [song/hymn/melody/melodic sounds] to audience x3 x1 acts so that x2 is quiet/silent/[still] at observation point x3 by standard x4 (smaji quiet + gasnu do) x1 (person) acts so that x2 (event/experience) misleads/deceives/dupes/fools/cheats/tricks x3 into x4 (event/state) (tcica deceive + gasnu do) x1 is a voice/speech sound of individual x2 x1 exceeds/is more than x2 in property/quantity x3 (ka/ni) by amount/excess x4 This is a fuivla, and youll have to work out what it is. Hint: say the word out loud, minus the prefix.

Exercise 6
Translate from Lojban: 1. .i bao lenu citka kei lei ci pendo ca casnu 2. .i cao bo ri klama le dansydiu pou la zgikrfanki jipci 3. .i la suzyn. cusku lu .i peu .djiotis. ko smagau le ve cradi 4. .i mi cou tirna la ranjit. liu 5. .i la djiotis. cusku lu .i keo .suzyn. mi nae tirna ria lenu le ve cradi cu cladu liu gie mou smagau 6. .i la ranjit cusku lu .i .ui kie dou mi coa tirna mi liu 7. .i la djiotis. cusku lu .i .uu mi jia goi liu 8. .i la ranjit. cusku lu .i keonai .djiotis. mi nelci lei me lao gy. Eurythmics gy. selsanga ne mau lemi voksa liu 9. .i la suzyn. cusku lu .i mi puo cusku laediu liu 10. .i la djiotis. cusku lu .i keonai .suzyn. liu

Exercise 7
Translate into Lojban:

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Chapter 12. Aspect, Vocatives, etc. 1. Jyoti, Ranjeet and Susan arrive at the disco at 0:50. (Hint: you dont have a distinct word for arrive; use klama and an appropriate aspect.) 2. Ranjeet says to Jyoti and Susan Look, you two, Ive got to go to the bank. 3. I was going to bring money, but I was paying too much attention to my radio transmissions. (Hint: use dukse in a tanru) 4. While Ranjeet isnt there, Jyoti says Susan? GnterThe Great Deceiverdumped you (Again, you dont have a word for dump; use prami and an appropriate aspect.) 5. So I thought you still hated everything German. 6. Susan says Uh-uh, but Ranjeets eyes are much more beautiful than Gnters. 7. A long way away from the women, Zhang loudly says How are you doing, friend! to Ranjeet.

Answers to exercises Exercise 1

1. .i mi ba puo fekpre 2. .i mi ca bao tcidu le cukta 3. .i la djiotis. ca cao klama le gusta 4. .i la ranjit. pu cao citka loi ri/voa cidjrkari 5. .i la suzyn. pu puo kansa mia gie kui bilga lenu stali le barja 6. .i mi pu bao klama le spita pu lenu do troci lenu do tavla mi

Exercise 2
To explain the peculiar Lojbanisations of place names below, we have helpfully supplied IPA transcriptions in brackets afterwards. 2. Munich (Munich [ myn n], Cologne [ kln]) 1. Moscow (St. Petersburg [sankt p t rspurg], Moscow [m s kfa])

6. The bar ([le bar a]). Of course.

5. Canton/Guangzhou (Shanghai [ axai], Canton/Guangzhou [kuat ow])

4. Between New Orleans and Cheyenne (Cheyenne [ j n], New Orleans [ n l nz]. OK, we arent necessarily serious about the last one.)

3. Florence (Florence [fi rentse], Venice [ve netsia])

Exercise 3
1. a. bee (Will Jyoti receive my message?, although jui could also be used, as someone is trying to draw Jyotis attention.) b. reinai (Jyoti is not ready to receive any messages.) 2.

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Chapter 12. Aspect, Vocatives, etc. a. fii (the English is a classic formula for offering hospitality; it may not always be literally meant!) b. jee (the simplest response is simply to acknowledge what has been said to you; Much obliged! is doing pretty much the same job as Youre welcome! You could respond with vio Thats exactly what Ill do!; but vio is a response to an explicit request, and fii isnt really a request. It would also make sense to respond with kie.) 3. a. muo (Please respond, which is pretty much the same thing as Its now your turn to speak.) b. keo (unless youre sneakily trying to say No, which would be more like vionai I refuse to comply with your request.) 4. a. peu (because the primary thing youre doing is making a request; but Excuse me is also initiating an exchange the other person wasnt expecting, so you could also use jui, taa, bee, or even coi.) b. fii, because youre offering a service, although vio is just as good, because youre carrying out a request.

Exercise 4
1. bangrkokni 2. cidjrpitsa (Remember, fuivla are done by pronunciation, not by spelling.) 3. cmacrderivativi (Or, if you know about Interlingue and ablatives, cmacrderivativo. But thats a long story...) 4. zgikrnadadjio or zgikrxadadjio, depending on what your favourite consonant is. 5. bilmrsaikopati, if youre borrowing the word from English; bilmrpsikopati or bilmrpsikopatia, if you want something closer to Greek (and thus presumably more recognisable to at least some non-English speakers.) 6. cidrndeuteriumu (or cidrndeuterio, if you know about those ablatives Im not going to explain here...) Of course, you cant use r as the joining consonant, since cidr- already ends in r. 7. jemnrnametisti or jemnrxametisti. (As it turns out, jemnrametisti would have also been acceptable as a fuivla.) 8. zgiknralentando (Remember, the word already starts with r, so you have to use n to join the two parts of the fuivla together instead.)

Exercise 5
1. a. la djiotis. me lo ninmu. b. la djiotis. du lo ninmu is possible, but frowned on, as discussed. c. As for the other two alternatives, even if we tucked away the is-clause after pou or nou, we would be left with no selbri at all. So we cant get away with them. 2. a. la djiotis. .e la suzyn. cu me le re ninmu poi klama fu le karce po la djiotis. b. la djiotis. joi la suzyn. du lei re ninmu poi klama fu le karce po la djiotis (note the masses! If youd used .e, you would be saying that Jyoti was the two women, and Susan was also the two women!)

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Chapter 12. Aspect, Vocatives, etc. c. There are two selbri here, but you cant really tuck one away with pou and be left with a selbri for the rest of the sentence. 3. a. la djiotis. .e la suzyn. me le ninmu poi la jan. jinvi le duu kea pendo ri. b. la djiotis. .e la suzyn. du le ninmu poi la jan. jinvi le duu kea pendo ri is possible but frowned on. c. A version with nou is not really possible, because there would be no selbri left for the main bridi. 4. a. la ranjit. noi me lo pendo be la djiotis. cu me lo xadba dotco. b. Frowned on but possible: la ranjit. noi du lo pendo be la djiotis. cu me lo xadba dotco. c. Frowned on but possible: la ranjit. nou lo pendo be la djiotis. cu me lo xadba dotco. 5. a. le vi blanu karce poi me le pritu be le mi karce cu me la ford. karce b. le vi blanu karce poi du le pritu be le mi karce cu me la ford. karce (The first is does indeed act as an equality sign: youre describing a car two different ways, to narrow it down. But the brand of a car is a class, so the second is is not an equality sign.) c. le vi blanu karce pou le pritu be le mi karce cu me la ford. karce (Since youre narrowing down what the car is, you need a restrictive rather than a non-restrictive clause.) Note: This use of me is pretty standard to get a cmene into a tanru. There are often times when you will want to use a name to describe a class of things, rather than a unique thing. This in turn means you have to treat a cmene like a selbri, entering into domains like tanru. In fact, as an extension of this, Type 1 and 2 fuivla are merely cmene converted with me to selbri: Type 1 involves the undigested cmene, with lao (e.g. me lao gy. curry gy.), while Type 2 Lojbanises it, using la (e.g. me la karis.).

Exercise 6
1. After they have finished eating, the three friends are now discussing. (Aspects can be used as sumti tcita, just like tenses can. bao means pretty much the same as ba here, but emphasises that they had finished eating when they started talking again.) 2. While they were doing so, they went to the disco [which is] The Funky Chicken (Aspects can also be used to connect sentences, just like tenses can. .i cao bo means that the second sentence took place while the first sentence was still going on. The fuivla considers Funky to be a kind of music: The Funk Chicken is probably more accurate.) 3. Susan says Jyoti, please turn the radio down. 4. Ive stopped hearing Ranjeet. 5. Jyoti says Come again, Susan? I didnt hear you because the radio is loud, and completes turning it down. (i.e. she turns it down to completionall the way down.) 6. Ranjeet says Heheh, thanks! I now start hearing myself! (This is a more pedantic rendering of what in English would be more like I can hear myself think again. The dou is necessary, because otherwise Ranjeet would be addressing himself: Thanks, Me!) 7. Jyoti says Unfortunately, so can I.

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Chapter 12. Aspect, Vocatives, etc. 8. Ranjeet says Dont repeat, Jyoti. I like Eurythmics songs, but my own voice more. (or: I like my own voice more than Eurythmics songs.) (Ranjeet, too clever a Lojbanist for his own good, is playing around with his vocatives.) 9. Susan says I was about to say that. (The full tense would have been pu puo, but you dont have to state the tense as well as the aspect when you think it is obvious from context.) 10. Jyoti says Dont repeat, Susan. (Two can play at that game!)

Exercise 7
1. .i la djiotis. .e la ranjit. .e la suzyn. mou klama le dansydiu tiu li no pie muno (Not cou klama, which would have had them stop on the way; nor bao klama, which would mean that they had already arrived at 0:50.) 2. .i la ranjit. cusku fi la djiotis. joi la suzyn. fe lu jui redo mi bilga lenu mi klama le banxa (or: mi .ei klama le banxa. Since Ranjeet speaks to Jyoti and Susan as a unit (together), joi is more appropriate, though .e is strictly speaking correct.) 3. .i mi pu puo bevri loi jdini gie dukse jundi lemi se cradi liu (A more pedantic versionin keeping with Ranjeets stylewould be: .i kui lenu mi jundi le se cradi pe mi cu se dukse) 4. .i cao lenu la ranjit. na zvati kei la djiotis. cusku lu bee .suzyn. la ginter. nou la banli ticygau cou prami do (cou is the only really good aspect to use; its somewhat more controversial to think of love as something with a natural ending point (mou), and Gnterthough he has turned Susan off some perfectly acceptable beverageshad not necessarily reached that point, anyway. If you wanted to keep the umlaut, you could also use lao dy. Gnter dy., or something like that. We presume this is the only Gnter they know, so his nickname isnt being used to distinguish him from other Gnters; hence, nou instead of pou.) 5. .i semuibo mi pu jinvi leduu do cao xebni ro lo dotco liu (or: ro dotco, since lo is assumed after numbers. ro da poi dotco is also correct.) 6. .i la suzyn. cusku lu .i jee dou kui le kanla be la ranjit. cu mutce zmadu le kanla be la ginter. le ka melbi liu (Kind of a baptism by fire for you with that new gismu. Sorry about that. You cant avoid dou here, otherwise Susan would be speaking to Ranjeets eyes: Thats right, O eyes of Ranjeets. By the way, the cu is necessary; otherwise, kanla be la ranjit. mutce zmadu would be taken as a single tanru individual gismu within a tanru can still have their own sumti attached with be.) 7. .i vu le ninmu la jan. cladu cusku lu .i coi pendo liu la ranjit. (A pure greeting, of course; Zhang is not actually asking Ranjeet how he is doing anything. He might want to know what he is doing there; but thats the next chapter of the saga...)

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Chapter 13. Keeping it flowing: Textual cmavo

Most of what weve been concentrating on until now has had to do with the logical side of Lojban getting sentences to be true. To that end, weve been looking at how to describe relationships between things (bridi, internal sumti); how to situate events and things in time and space; how to describe things as masses or individuals; how to speak about events and facts; and so on. This kind of thing is the hard-core of Lojban, so to speak; the logical machinery on which Lojban is based, and which works with concrete realities. But theres another, less concrete side to language. No, not its ineffable soul, or its intrinsic poetry, or anything like that: were not about to go into such rarified abstractions. (Although those rarified abstractions do have some rather tangibleand linguistically concretebases.) The less concrete side of language has to do, not with what you say about things, but how you manage the business of saying it. This means things like:

how you express your attitudes to things;

how you put the things you talk about in the foreground or the background; how you deal with misunderstandings and errors; how you structure your texts.

A language isnt really a language if it cant cope with things like thesealthough typically these kinds of things are not dealt with in traditional grammars, but are picked up in usage. If theres one thing youll have noticed about Lojban, of course, its that it is as explicitly specified as possible. Accordingly, Lojban has a special subsection of its grammar dealing with these issues, rather than leaving it up to usage. But, precisely because this isnt what logic was designed for, the grammar Lojban uses here has little to do with bridi: it is a much simpler grammar, mostly using isolated words. Well go through the ones youre likeliest to meet.

Lojban with lots more attitude

Youll remember from way back in Lesson 1 that Lojban has little words called attitudinal indicators (or attitudinals), which show how you feel about something. That something is whatever precedes the attitudinal. As we have seen, if the attitudinal is after a terminator, its a reaction to whatever phrase ends in the terminator. If it follows an article, then it applies to the entire sumti; if it follows a connective, it applies to the connective and whatever following term it is connecting; and so on.

Attitudinals belong to selmao UI. This means that their grammar is as simple as can be: they can turn up after just about any word of Lojban, without disrupting anything going on grammatically. For that reason, they dont need terminators: theres no danger of them swallowing up any errant sumti (unlike their close relatives, the vocatives.) There are some cmavo whose job is to modify other UI cmavo, though. Youve seen one already: nai has the function of converting the attitudinal expressed to its opposite. So if .au expresses interest, its opposite, .aunai, expresses repulsion. We saw in our discussion of negations that, when you set up a scale between something and its opposite (toe), you can also speak of something thats neutral, in-

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between (noe). The same goes for attitudinals, and the word to use in that case is cui. So .aucui expresses neither interest nor repulsion, but disinterest.

You can divide up the continuum even more finely. If you want to say that you feel an emotion only weakly, you can add to it rue. If you want to say you feel it strongly, you can add sai. And if you want to say you feel it really strongly, you add cai. This gives you a seven-part scale:
cai > sai > (nothing) > rue > cui > nairue > nai > naisai > naicai

So for instance, if you want to say Eh. Thats cool, youd say .aucui. If you want to say That is really gross!, youd say .aunaisai. And if you want to say Oh my God, that is the most interesting thing in the world since the very invention of Lojban!!!, .aucai is a pretty safe bet.
Note: All these modifiers belong to selmao CAI, except for naiwhich turns up all over Lojban grammar, as weve already seen, and has its own selmao, NAI.

There are 39 attitudinals fitting the pattern VV (two vowels, possibly with an apostrophe between them; these are a subclass of selmao UI, called UI1.) Each of these corresponds to a different emotional state. With the addition of the seven-way scale weve just described, that makes 273 attitudinals you can use, plunking them pretty much wherever you want in your sentence. Thats not even counting selmao UI4 and UI5, which can further modify your attitudes. As with everything else, Lojban allows you to be as specific as you want to be in expressing yourself.
Note: selmao UI4 specifies what part of you is feeling the emotionwhether it is a physical, social, mental response, and so on. selmao UI5 has some left-over modifiers; we already saw in passing gai, which indicates haughtiness. The cmavo in this category you will see almost constantly is zoo. It is used just like the smiley-face in email, to indicate that youre being humorous when saying something, and its used for much the same reason. In these two communication systems, its difficult to work out whether someone is joking or not in e-mail, because you cant hear the tone of voice that gives things away; in Lojban, because by its ideology the language doesnt want to leave things to natural-languagebased intuition (and also because its used a lot on e-mail anyway.) So hints like this are always welcome, and frequently taken advantage of.

Vocabulary
Note: Attitudinals have three-way glosses: what they mean on their own, what they mean with cui after them, and what they mean with nai after them.
.ai .oo .ou .eu .ie .uu .uu

attitudinal: intent indecision rejection/refusal attitudinal: patience mere tolerance anger attitudinal: relaxation composure stress attitudinal: suggestion abandon suggest warning attitudinal: approval non-approval attitudinal: pity cruelty attitudinal: repentance lack of regret innocence

Exercise 1
Match one of the following attitudinals to each of the following situations.
.aunairue .eurue

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.eucai .ienai .ierue .iesai .oonai .ou .uu .uu

1. You see someone stub their toe. 2. You bought the last ice cream in the shop, and the toddler queuing behind you has started crying. 3. Youd like to ask someone to take you along to the shops, if its not too much trouble. 4. You will absolutely die if your sister doesnt take you to the Ricky Martin concert. 5. Your local football team, the Loglandia Contrapositives, has just won a match. You watch football maybe twice a year. 6. You have just been slapped in the face, and you are neither the Buddha nor Christor into S&M, for that matter.

My attitudinals! All mine! (And you?)

A common pitfall to avoid is trying to specify whose attitude the attitudinals express. The reason UI cmavo are so simple is that they express direct emotional responsesgut reactions, without making any fine distinctions like whose attitude is involved. The reaction is always taken to be the speakers. So .ui do cliva means youre happy that someone else is leaving, just like Youre leavingYay! does. If you wanted to say that the someone else is happy, not you, then you wouldnt say Yay! at all. Instead, youd say something like You must be happy youre leaving. The same goes in Lojban: if youre relaying someone elses responses, not your own, then thats what bridi are there for.

You wouldnt likely make this mistake for .ui; but there are other cmavo its almost impossible not to do this with. The worst offender is probably .ei, which expresses obligation. .ei mi cliva means I ought to leave. But .ei do cliva doesnt necessarily mean You ought to leave. Its more like I feel the obligation for you to leave: I can say this if I want you gone while youre making yourself comfortablebut not if youve remembered youve got to be somewhere else, while Id want nothing more than for you to stick around.
Tip: The temptation to use attitudinals for others reactions is strong enough, in fact, that there are a couple of ways of getting around it. If you add the UI5 cmavo sei, you say that you feel the emotion for yourself. If you add seinai, then, you say that you feel it for someone else: .uiseinai is pretty much Im happy for you! And if you add dai, youre saying that the emotion is someone elses, and that you are empathising with them. If .au is Thats interesting!, .audai is more like That must have been interesting for you!

One final thing: if you want to know how someone feels about something, once again Lojban provides a fill-in-the-slot question word. The word asking the listener to fill in the attitudinal that best applies is pei. You can fill pei in with anything from selmao UI, NAI or CAI. So if I ask you
.i pei le lunra cu blanu

The moon is bluehow do you feel about that?

at least one response is .ienai Disagree! (Uh-uh, No way!, No!, etc.) pei can also explicitly ask for NAI or CAI alone, by following a UI cmavo. So a response to

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Chapter 13. Keeping it flowing .i .uipei do farlu le pesxu

You fell into the mud! Funny, eh?

could well be rue: Kinda... Then again, it could also be naicai: Absolutely not, and I shall thank you never to mention it in my presence again. (Allowing for some latitude in translation...)

Discursives

Attitude isnt the only meaning UI cmavo convey. Another subclass of UI cmavo (UI3: discursives) carry information about how a particular word or phrase fits in with everything else youre saying.

Weve seen one such cmavo already: kui, which means but, however. This means that whatever it is attached to contrasts with what youve been saying. It usually applies to a whole sentence (so normally youll see it next to .i), but it can apply to a single word: .abu na.e kui by. is the proper Lojban for Not A, but B. The flipside to kui is jia additionally, also (which we saw in passing last lesson.) This means that whatever it is attached to adds on to what youve been saying. Again, this can apply to individual words, as well as sentences:
.i .ai mi venfu do doi melbi .e jia le do cmalu gerku

Ill get you, my prettyand your little dog, too!

In some cases, there is nothing to either contrast or add to what youve said, because what youve said is the unique relevant case. In that context, you would use only in English. Because only is somewhat clumsy to express in terms of pure logic, Lojban allows another discursive as its equivalent: poo. So Only cats like catnip is in Lojban for catnip I had to go look up online.)
loi mlatu poo cu nelci loi spati be lao ly. Nepeta cataria ly. (Nepeta cataria being the Linnaean name

If you wanted to say that something is not the only applicable case, then of course youd say poonai. There are several more discursives, but you wont seem them all that often. Some to watch out for, though, include:
bau sae juo laa tao

zuu

exaggeration accuracy understatement precisely speaking loosely speaking certainly uncertain certainly not probably improbably by the way returning to the subject on the one hand on the other hand

There are two more UI cmavo that will come in handy. dai means hypothetically; it points out that what you are saying is a hypothesis, rather than fact. This is how you distinguish between hypothetical and non-hypothetical kinds of if:
.i dai do zvati le nu la rikis.martin. tigni .inaja do tirna lao sy. La Vida Loca sy.

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If you had gone to the Ricky Martin concert, then you would have heard La Vida Loca.
.i dainai do zvati le nu la rikis.martin. tigni .inaja do tirna lao sy. La Vida Loca sy.

If you did go to the Ricky Martin concert, then you must have heard La Vida Loca.

kia, finally, is a cmavo you want to make your friend. kia is Lojban for Huh? When you dont

understand what someone has just saidwhether because you dont get what they were referring to, or you dont know the word, or the grammar confused youyou can repeat the word or phrase you didnt get, and add kia as a plaintive request for clarification (so its even better than Huh?, because you can point out exactly what made you say Huh?):
.i mi puzi te vencu lo matcrflokati .i matcrflokati kia

I just bought a flokati [rug]. Flokati? Huh?

Exercise 2
Give the Lojban discursives corresponding to the emphasised words in each of the following sentences. Note: This exercise relies heavily on a particular variant of idiomatic American English. (Since the equivalents of discursives, and attitudinals in general, are among the features of language that tend to be idiomatic, this is hard to avoid.) If youre not familiar with the idiom, dont worry about this exercise; youll get plenty of practice with discursives once you start using Lojban conversationally, anyway. 1. The Eiffel Tower is, like, 20 miles tall or something. 2. Say this guy goes up to you and goes, Dude, your flys undone. Thatd be, like, so embarrassing! 3. So, anyway, I see this dude, and hes like, all Im just hanging with my friends, you know what Im saying?. And Im, like, Hellooo? Theres, like, nobody else here! 4. So, like, here youve got this dude whos, like, totally grody, scoping me out. And then theres Tiffany walking by in the other direction. Plus shes got Tracy and Shannon with her. And she totally walks two feet away from me acting like, Do I know you? Like, bogus to the max! (You may attain Lojban divinity status if, on some future date, you come back to this scintillating little anecdote and translate in to Lojban. Like, totally.)

Erasure

When you make a mistake while speaking, whether in your wording or your grammar, you dont normally bother to correct itif you even realise you made a mistake in the first place. Thats because natural languages are fairly redundant (for this very reason!); and we normally rely a lot more on context than on what we actually hear, anyway. If we do catch ourselves making an error, we stumble out a correction that will do the trick, without going into details like how many words should be cancelled: again, context is almost always more than adequate. So if I say I downloaded and learned some Esperanto vocabulary. Er, Lojban vocabulary.

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context and common sense dictate that Lojban vocabulary is meant to replace Esperanto vocabulary. But what if it was meant to replace some Esperanto vocabulary? Or downloaded and learned some Esperanto vocabulary? We wouldnt normally care, in natural languages.

But Lojban is Lojban precisely because it is not a natural language. And this kind of imprecision does not sit well with how the language was designed. So Lojban allows you to be more precise about what words you are correcting. Whether it is actually too be precise to be usefulwell, thats something for usage to determine. But the tools are available, if you want them.
si erases the immediately preceding word. If you want to erase two words in a row, you say si si after

them. So the correction above would be in Lojban

.i mi te benji je cilre loi bangrnesperanto valsi si si lojbo valsi.

The problem with si is, you have to count words. This can get tedious, and you shouldnt have to keep a transcript of your words when you want to correct yourself. The other correction word Lojban offers is somewhat more helpful: sa erases a phrase. It works by taking the word following it, which starts the phrase to serve as the correction. It then goes back in the sentence, looking for the last time you used a phrase starting with the same word. (Same selmao, actually.) Once it finds the last such phrase, it replaces all text from that phrase up to sa with the phrase following sa. For example:
.i mi te benji je cilre loi sa .i mi cilre loi lojbo.

The correction following sa is a sentence; you know that, because the first word after sa is the sentence marker, .i. So the sentence following sa replaces the current sentence up to and including sa. Or consider:
.i mi mrilu fi do ca le purlamdei sa ca la reldjed.

The correction is ca la reldjed. on Monday. So what it replaces is everything from the last phrase beginning with ca: ca le purlamdei yesterday. The English version would be Yesterday I mailed you... actually, it was Monday.
Tip: Of the Lojban erasure words, sa is not as widely known as si, and another, unofficial solution has arisen on IRC (Internet Relay Chat) to the problem of correcting a word in the sentence after youve completed that sentence. (People on IRC tend to type faster than they should, so this kind of problem arises pretty frequently.) The solution is to repeat the error word, then erase it with si, then give the correction. Strictly speaking, thats not how si is meant to workit only makes sense to a computer parser if the erasure is within the current sentence; but youll see this on IRC fairly often.

Exercise 3
Apply the required erasures to the following Lojban sentences. 1. .i mi viska le si la djan. 2. .i mi viska la djan. si si si catlu la djan. 3. .i mi viska la djan. sa catlu 4. .i lenu lebna loi lojbo valsi cu nandu sa nu vimcu loi lojbo valsi lo jufra cu nandu 5. .i mi .e lemi pendo cu zvati le barja sa .e la ranjit. cu zvati le barja ca lenu do zvati le gusta

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Bits and pieces

Inevitably with textual cmavo, theres a lot of words that can only be called odds and ends; they each have a specific little job, and dont have much in common. The Complete Lojban Language, Chapter 19, bemoans the same problem in paedagogy for the same topic; so at least were in good company. To survive in Lojbanistan, though, youll certainly need the following:
nio

begins a new paragraph. Paragraphs are usually associated with new topics, and nio is meant to remind you of cnino new. Theres some complicated stuff about what happens with tenses and assigned pro-sumti across different types of paragraph, but you can do without that for now. To emphasise a word, where you would use stress in a spoken natural language, and italics or capitals in a written language, Lojban insists (as should be no surprise to you by now) that you use a separate word: bae. Like UI, this word can go pretty much anywhere in a Lojban sentence, but it emphasises the word that follows it, rather than what precedes it. Or, to put it in Lojban,
zo bae basna le valsi poi se lidne jenai lidne zo bae

zo kia,

I hear you ask? Good, that means youve been paying attention! zo is a quotation marker, just like lu. However, zo quotes only the word immediately after it. This means it does not need a terminator: we already know where the quotation ends. The saving of two syllables is highly valued in a language which can get as prolix as Lojban does.
Note: Since zo quotes any word following itany wordit turns out that zo kia doesnt mean zo? Huh? at all, but The word kia. To ask zo? Huh?, youll have to resort to (wait for it) zo zo kia.

Parenthetical remarks can go anywhere UI canmeaning pretty much anywhere in a Lojban sentence. With parentheses, just like with quotes, you need to know where the parenthesis starts, and where it ends. And just like quotes, the end-parenthesis terminator is going to be pretty hard to drop out. The normal Lojban parentheses are to and toi. So This (no, I dont want another one!) apple is rotten comes out in Lojban as:
ti poi to vionai dou mi na djica lo drata toi plise cu fusra

Vocabulary
cizra

x1 is strange/weird/deviant/bizarre/odd to x2 in property x3 (ka)

Exercise 4
Translate the following disfunctional dialogue. 1. .i zo to to mi ca tavla fo la lojban toi xamgu lenu tavla fo la lojban 2. .i xamgu kia 3. nio xu do nelci lai loglandias.kontrapositivos. 4. .i lai kia 5. .i mi to .e do xu toi gleki lenu te vecnu loi matcrflokati 6. .i do tavla lo bae cizra

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Summary

In this lesson, we have covered lots and lots of little words: Attitudinal scales (NAI, CAI) Attitudinal questions (pei) Discursives (UI3) Paragraphs (nio) Emphasis (bae) Nonself-directed and empathic attitudinals

Erasing words and phrases (si, sa)

Single-word quotations (zo) Parentheses (to, toi)

Vocabulary
dansu dasni .ee .ia krixa drata crida

lanli milxe

terdi

sisku

sesiu pensi

xalfekfri zirpu

x1 is a fairy/elf/gnome/brownie/pixie/goblin/kobold [mythical humanoid] of mythos/religion x2 x1 (individual, mass) dances to accompaniment/music/rhythm x2 x1 wears/is robed/garbed in x2 as a garment of type x3 x1 isnt the-same-thing-as/is different-from/other-than x2 by standard x3; x1 is something else attitudinal: competence incompetence/inability attitudinal: belief skepticism disbelief x1 cries out/yells/howls sound x2; x1 is a crier x1 analyzes/examines-in-detail x2 by method/technique/system x3 [process/activity] x1 is mild/non-extreme/gentle/middling/somewhat in property x2 (ka); x1 is not very x2 sumti tcita: assisting... (sidju help) x1 thinks/considers/cogitates/reasons/is pensive about/reflects upon subject/concept x2 x1 seeks/searches/looks for property x2 among set x3 (complete specification of set) x1 is the Earth/the home planet of race x2; (adjective:) x1 is terrestrial/earthbound inebriated, drunk (xalka alcohol + fenki crazy + lifri experience) x1 is purple/violet [color adjective]

Translate from Lojban. Remember, ka is the abstractor that specifies a quality (and is obligatory for the second place of sisku.) 1. nio tao la jan. milxe xalfekfri kiu lenu klama lo drata barja 2. .i taonai la jan. cusku lu .i doi le pedro si pendo .eurue mui ma do vi zvati liu 3. .i la ranjit. cusku lu .i lenu mi kansa la djiotis. .e lo pendo be ri to mutce melbi .uasai toi liu 4. .i la jan. lu .i mi lenu do .e re melbi cu kansa cu bae gleki doi pendo sa lenu do kansa re sae melbi cu gleki liu 5. .i la ranjit. lu .i .eepei zoo do ca klama la jipci liu 6. .i la jan. lu .i .audai do denpa lenu viska lenu mi dansu lenu si si la jipci vi .y. la jipci liu 7. .i ranjit. lu .i ro da pe le dansydiu coa krixa zo peu vau baurue liu

Exercise 5

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Chapter 13. Keeping it flowing 8. .i jan. lu .i xu .iacui do bao cradi fo le crida liu 9. to la ranjit. cu lanli loi se cradi sesiu la nu sisku leka terdi bartu pensi toi 10. .i la ranjit lu .i .ie juo lenu do tavla cu zdile liu 11. .i la jan. lu .i jee dou .iesei goi liu

Exercise 6
Translate into Lojban. 1. Only Susan doesnt know that Zhang knows Ranjeet. (Hint: trick question! The two instances of know do not translate to the same gismu!) 2. Susan: Woah! Youre here, and youre wearing purple, too! 3. Zhang: If Id known youd be here, Id have worn nothing :-) (Nothing in Lojban is zero somethings.) 4. Jyoti: Not only geeky, but insane. (Make up a fuivla for geeky, based on kulnu x1 [mass of ideas, customs, skills, arts] is culture of nation/ethos x2 (mass); x1 is ethnic. Assume (for now!) the place structure x1 is geeky.) 5. Ranjeet is very amused, and says Probably! 6. (Far away, an extraterrestrial intelligence sets off for Earth.) (Youll need a three-part tanru for this. And youve already seen it, if youve been good....)

Answers to exercises Exercise 1

1. .uu is the most usual reaction. This is one meaning of English Sorry! 2. .uu (again, unless you flout the dominant social norms.) This is the other meaning of English Sorry! 3. .eurue, the Eh, whatever type of request. 4. .eucai, the Begging on hands and knees type of request. 5. .ierue: yet another slacker attitudinal. 6. .oonai. In Lojban, anger is considered the opposite of patience: losing your temper. The Buddha would presumably react with .aucui (indifference), and Christ with .io (love). Someone getting a thrill out of this would react with something more like .oinai (un-complaint, i.e. pleasure.)

Exercise 2
1. bau is the only discursive Lojban would tolerate here, as the Eiffel Tower, is, like, totally not 20 miles tall! 2. a. dai b. juo that would certainly be embarrassing (or saethat would, in precise terms, be embarrassing.) 3. a. taonai (getting back to what I was saying...) b. poo (this is the only relevant thing Im doing.) c. kia (theres a wealth of attitudinals in this word, but kia is really the only relevant discursive.)

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Chapter 13. Keeping it flowing 4. a. zuu (on the one hand...; it might not be as elegant as the Classical Greek contrast clauses with men and de, but thats what it means.) b. zuunai c. jia d. sae (or baucui: presumably our hapless narrator isnt exaggerating here.)

Exercise 3
1. .i mi viska la djan. 2. .i mi catlu la djan. 3. .i mi catlu (What follows sa is a selbri; so it replaces the last selbri weve seen, as well as everything else up to sa, including the sumti, la djan.) 4. .i lenu vimcu loi lojbo valsi lo jufra cu nandu (Youre telling me!) 5. .i mi .e la ranjit. cu zvati le barja ca lenu do zvati le gusta (The phrase following sa is the name la ranjit.; everything from that name on, i.e. cu zvati le barja, is deleted.)

Exercise 4
1. The word to (I am now speaking Lojban) is good for speaking Lojban. 2. Good?! 3. To change the topic: Do you like the (mass of) Loglandia Contrapositives? 4. lai?! (Not a commonly used article, after all.) 5. I (and you?) are happy to buy flokati rugs. (Note that xu, as a UI cmavo, specifically queries the word it follows; this is shorthand for asking Do you too?) 6. You say strange things.

Exercise 5
1. (New Paragraph) Incidentally, Zhang is somewhat drunk, because he went to another bar. 2. Anyway, Zhang says Pedro, I mean, friend, do you mind telling me what youre doing here? 3. Ranjeet says Im with Jyoti and a friend of hers (really good-looking; what a win!) 4. Zhang: I, for you and two beautiful people accompanying, am happy, friend... I mean, for you accompanying two beautiful people (to put it precisely), am happy (We can get away with this sentence no verb in Lojban. And lets not be too hard on Zhang, either, who has the sense to fix his Lojban grammar even in his elated state. He has tried to say for you and two beautiful people being together, but kansa in Lojban corresponds to you are together with two beautiful people: it is not reciprocal.) 5. Ranjeet: Youre now going to the Chickensure you can manage it? :-) 6. Zhang: Youre just waiting to see me dance that, er, the Chicken at, uh, the Chicken. (The empathy attitudinal dai expresses desire, but its a desire Zhang is projecting onto others. Thats roughly what just is doing in the English: You must be wanting it, waiting for me.... Zhang produces one too many lenus, so he has to delete his last one; note that lenu counts as two words!)

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Chapter 13. Keeping it flowing 7. Ranjeet: Everybody in the disco starts shouting Please domore or less. (Any resemblance to Everybody in the house say Yeah is purely obscured by Ranjeets pedantry. The attitudinal goes after vau, which you may remember from Lesson 5 is the terminator for a sentence; so the slight exaggeration attitudinal applies to the whole sentence.) 8. Zhang: Are you really done sending broadcasts to the pixies? (Sacrificing Zhangs pretty good wordplay, considering his tired and emotional state.) 9. (Ranjeet analyses radio transmissions for the Search for Extraterrestial Intelligence.) (Abstractions can be names just like simple sumti.) Note: When you search in Lojban, you search for something that fits some property, and so you name the property as x2. That means that you dont say youre searching for good things, but for goodness that is, youre searching by checking whether each thing you come across has goodness or not. This is sort of an extension of Lojbans fill-in-the-slot approach to questions: .i mi sisku leka ___ terdi bartu

pensi .i lo fange pe la mars. cu terdi bartu pensi .i lo fange pe la venus. cu terdi bartu pensi .i lo fange pe la vulkan. cu terdi bartu pensi .i la jan. na terdi bartu pensi.

10. Ranjeet: Good job! Certainly you talking is entertaining. (Or more colloquially, Its fun to hear you talk.) 11. Zhang: Yup, it is, isnt it! (Spoken with some comical smugness, no doubt...)

Exercise 6
1. .i la suzyn. poo na djuno leduu la ranjit. slabu la jan. (Some languages, like French and German, differentiate between knowing facts and knowing people. Some languages, like English, do not. No prizes for guessing which side of the divide Lojban is on. poo follows la suzyn., since thats who it applies to.) 2. .i la suzyn. lu .i .uecai do vi zvati gie jia dasni loi zirpu liu or .i la suzyn. lu .i .uecai do vi zvati .i je jia do dasni loi zirpu liu (You can tone it down to .uesai, if you want.) 3. .i la jan. lu .i dai mi djuno leduu do vi zvati kei nagia dasni noda zoo liu or .i la jan. lu .i dai mi djuno leduu do vi zvati .inaja mi dasni noda zoo liu. In fact (for reasons we wont go into here), things turns out to be less problematic for hypothetical if-statements if you use a solution based on nibli or nii: .i la jan. lu .i lenu mi dai djuno leduu do vi zvati cu nibli lenu mi dasni noda zoo liu, or .i la jan. lu .i mi dai djuno leduu do vi zvati .i seniibo
dai mi dasni noda zoo liu

4. la djiotis. lu .i kulnrgiki poonai gie jia fekypre liu (But here doesnt contradict expectation; it corroborates it. So in this case but actually means also! You could in fact add also or too in the English sentence. Some languages have different words for the two types of but: German, for instance, would here use sondern instead of aber.) 5. .i la ranjit. mutce se zdile gie cusku zo laa (or lu .i laa goi liu) 6. to vuku lo terdi bartu pensi coa klama la terdi toi or to lo terdi bartu pensi vu coa klama la terdi toi (You could optionally put an .i after to, but you dont have to: theres no danger of the sentence within parentheses being merged in with the sentence before it.)

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Chapter 14. Why didnt I think of that before? More connectives

We have already seen in Lesson 11 several Lojban connectives described. This lesson rounds off discussion of connectives, with three additional types. First, we consider forethought connectives: these are used to identify the logical relation between two terms by being placed in front of the first term, rather than in between the two. Then, we look at some more non-logical connectiveswhich may prove more useful than you might have expected, especially in a logical language. Finally, we look at connectives used to structure tanruin particular, how to group gismu together within tanru.

Forethought connectives

As weve already seen, there are some things odd about the Lojban logical connective for IF. One oddity we havent touched upon is that you realise that theres a conditional going on only halfway through. Recall what a typical instance of IF looks like:
.i mi djuno leduu do vi zvati .inaja mi dasni noda

You read the first sentence, and everything goes swimmingly: I know that youre here. Then, shazam! you get the connective: IF that were the case, I would wear nothing. You didnt know in advance that the first sentence was going to be an IF. This is unlike the case in English (and natural languages in general), where the if comes right at the start of the first sentence, and gives you plenty of warning about whats coming up.

The problem here is, the logical version of IF denies what comes before it. So in effect, youre getting the first statement, quite normally, and then the surprise: Either thats not true, or this is true. Things are just as bad for other connectives denying what comes before them. For instance, na.e is a perfectly reasonable connective:
mi djica loi bakni na.e loi jipci

I want not the beef, but the chicken.

But look at what the Lojban is actually saying: I want the beefNOT! and the chicken. There was a vogue in the 90s of putting NOT! at the end of sentences in American English (see Waynes World.) This was a joke, and the reason it was a joke is that saying a sentence isnt true after youve already said it isnt exactly being helpful.

So if were going to use logical connectives in Lojban, and are obligated to pull NOT!-tricks like this, the Lojban listener can understandably get frustrated. Once again, though, Lojban has an answer. With forethought connectives, you can indicate the logical relationship between two terms in front of the first term. You still need a word separating the two terms, to show what is being logically connected; but now you know in advance what that logical connection is.

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Chapter 14. Why didnt I think of that before?

If sumti are involved, the forethought connective is formed by placing g in front of the vowel indicating the logical relationship. The two sumti are then connected with the leftover g-word, gi. So the forethought version of mi .e do is
ge mi gi do

Here, ge means that the two sumti coming up are connected with AND, while gi indicates that what follows is the second sumti in the relation. (These forethought connectives belong to selmao GA.)

The real usefulness of these forms comes out in the NOT!-connectives weve just seen. If you want to give some warning when choosing the chicken instead of the beef, you can now say
mi djica genai loi bakni gi loi jipci

(Forethought connectives can be followed by nai, just like their afterthought counterparts.) If you wanted to say beef, not chicken, you would put nai after the gi:
mi djica ge loi bakni ginai loi jipci

If youre connecting bridi, as it turns out, you still use selmao GA. If you dont follow GA + sumti immediately by gi and another sumti, then Lojban grammar assumes that youre connecting not sumti any more, but bridi. So our forethought version of Zhangs statement of wishful thinking is:
.i ganai mi djuno lenu do vi zvati gi mi dasni noda

Youll notice that there is no second .i here. Two bridi connected by GA belong to the same sentence; we already know from the grammar that whats coming up after the gi is a separate bridi, so we dont need to separate it out with .i.
Tip: This can actually turn out handy in beating Lojban precedence. For example, remember in Lesson 10 that we gave two sentences, and their logical conclusion:
.i la flufis. ractu .ije ro ractu nae zeu jmive .i la flufis. senii na zeu jmive

We should be able from that to say

.i la flufis. ractu .ije ro ractu nae zeu jmive .iseniibo la flufis. na zeu jmive

right? Actually, no we cant: bo has the function of connecting sentences through sumti tcita, because it connects sentences on its own. And when it does, it connects them tighter than .ije does. This means that .iseniibo connects only to the immediately preceding sentencenot to the preceding sentence pair! So Fluffys death is presented as a consequence of rabbits not living longnot a consequence of both rabbits not living long and Fluffy being a rabbit. However, if we put the two bridi in a single sentence, then none of this is an issue: the conclusion will attach to both bridi, but will still attach to a single sentence:
.i ge la flufis. ractu gi ro ractu nae zeu jmive .iseniibo la flufis. na zeu jmive

There is also a forethought connective for tanru, corresponding to JA: these are the connectives belonging to selmao GUhA, and are formed by placing gu in front of the connective vowel (connecting the second tanru with gi.) So if we want to say that Susan fancies men that are, if funny, then also handsome, the afterthought version is

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Chapter 14. Why didnt I think of that before? la suzyn. cinynei ro melbi naja xajmi nanmu

To make this slightly (but only slightly!) more comprehensible, we can put this in forethought mode:
la suzyn. cinynei ro guanai melbi gi xajmi nanmu

There are no forethought versions of bridi-tail connectives. In practice, however, two bridi connected by GA can be bridi-tails just as easily as full bridi: there is no real meaning distinction between the two.

Exercise 1
Give sentences using forethought connectives instead of the afterthought connectives used below. 1. .i la djiotis. nelci loi cidjrkari .a loi nanba 2. .i la djiotis. nelci loi cidjrkari .iju la djiotis. citka loi cidjrkari 3. .i la djiotis. nelci ju citka loi cidjrkari 4. .i la djiotis. nelci loi cidjrkari gie xebni loi zirpu 5. .i la djiotis. .onai la suzyn. djuno leduu la jan. zvati jonai tadni 6. .i la djiotis. nelci loi cidjrkari .a loi nanba .e loi jisra (Remember: Lojban nests to the left!) 7. .i la djiotis. .onai la suzyn. djuno leduu la jan. zvati .inaja la jan. se denpa

Non-logical connectives

We have already seen one non-logical connective, joi. By non-logical, we mean that the truth of the combined terms does not depend on the truth of the individual components. It may not be true that la kris. bevri le pipno Chris carries the piano, or la pat. bevri le pipno Pat carries the piano, for example (to revisit an example from Lesson 4), even if it is true that la kris. joi la pat. bevri le pipno Chris and Pat carry the piano. Lojban has several other non-logical connectives; well cover the most frequently used ones:
ce

We havent said much about sets; and because sets are fairly abstract entities, as entities go, you dont often have occasion to talk about them. While you can say mi viska loi remna I saw a mass of people, for example (you saw them as a bunch), you arent likely to say mi viska loi remna I saw a set of people.

joins sumti (usually) into a set, rather than a mass like joi.

But as we have seen in the exercises, some gismu need sets in order to work. simxu, for example, takes as its x1 a set. This is because the group of things or people in a mutual relationship needs to be welldefined: youve got to be able to say with certainty whether someone is involved in the relationship or not. The point of sets is that you can categorically say x belongs to the set or doesnt. The membership of masses is left much more nebulous, so saying a bunch of people talk to each other doesnt make as definite a statement. The same goes for cuxna choose: what you choose from in Lojban (x3) is a set, because you normally have to be certain what belongs in the group youre choosing from, and what doesnt. So when you form a set out of several sumti, you connect them with ce. To say Jyoti, Susan and Ranjeet talk to each other, you would say something like

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Chapter 14. Why didnt I think of that before? la djiotis. ce la suzyn. ce la ranjit. simxu lenu tavla

or
la djiotis. ce la suzyn. ce la ranjit. tavla simxu

Similarly, if you pick one of Jyoti, Susan or Ranjeet, you would say
mi cuxna pa da la djiotis. ce la suzyn. ce la ranjit.

If you are referring to an ordered seta sequence of things, in other wordsthen you use ceo to place things in order. This gets invoked when youre compiling a list for whatever reason; for example, the Lojban alphabet is a sequence, and youd list it as
.abu ceo by. ceo cy. ceo dy. ceo .ebu ...

and so on. This is what liste list and porsi sequence expect as their x1 sumti.
fau

carries the meaning of respectively: it relates pairs of sumti cross-wise. If I were to say
la suzyn. .e la djiotis. tavla la jan. .e la ranjit.

that means that both Susan and Jyoti talk to both Zhang and Ranjeet. If I want to say that Susan only talked to Zhang, and Jyoti only to Ranjeet (i.e. Susan and Jyoti talked to Zhang and Ranjeet, respectively), a logical connective is not useful. Instead, I would use fau to connect both pairs of sumti:
la suzyn. fau la djiotis. tavla la jan. fau la ranjit.

Susan, cross-wise with Jyoti, talks to Zhang, cross-wise with Ranjeet.

If youre talking about a range, you use bii to describe the range between the first thing and the second thing; so it corresponds to English between. If you want to say I dropped my pencil somewhere between the office and the bar, you would describe the location somewhere between the office and the bar as le briju ku bii le barja. The whole sentence would come out as:
mi falcru lemi pinsi vi le briju ku bii le barja

This selmao, BIhI, like selmao JOI to which all non-logical connectives belong, can join both sumti and selbri. So Lojban grammar requires you to terminate a sumti before JOI with ku.

Warning

If the order of the things defining the range matters, you use bio. This corresponds to from... to... in English (though between covers both ordered and unordered intervals.) For example, from 1 PM to 2 PM is an interval lasting an hour; but from 2 PM to 1 PM would normally be interpreted as a 23-hour interval (1 pm the following day), since times in English are assumed to be presented in order. Lojban follows suit with li pavo loo bio li paci as a 23-hour interval. If I said li pavo loo bii li paci, the order of the two times would not matter at all; so I could still be talking about a one-hour interval instead.

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Chapter 14. Why didnt I think of that before? Tip: The selmao BIhI needs all sumti terminated before it, not just normal sumti with le or lo. Since numbers are also sumti, you have to use the terminator corresponding to li, which is loo. Note: You can use non-logical connectives in forethought mode, too: the forethought connective is the non-logical connective followed by gi. So the forethought version of la kris. joi la pat. is joi gi la kris. gi la

pat.

Exercise 2
Which logical or non-logical connective would you use to translate the emphasised phrases in the following sentences? 1. The murderer is one of Colonel Mustard, Professor Plum, or Miss White. 2. The Greek Dialect Dictionary has published five volumes, from alpha to delta. 3. See the Lojban Reference Grammar, pp. 2224. 4. A dactyl consists of two short syllables, one long syllable; an anapaest consists of one long syllable, two short syllables. 5. Out of Zhang, Susan, Jyoti and Ranjeet, Zhang is the purplest. 6. Jyoti and Susan discuss Zhangs fashion sense. 7. Ranjeet and Zhang are wearing shirts.

tanru grouping

The default grouping in Lojban is leftwards. This means that, if you have three things connected together in Lojban, the first two go together before you join in the third. For example, la djiotis. .e la suzyn. .onai la ranjit means not Jyoti and either Susan or Ranjeet, but Either Jyoti and Susan, or Ranjeet.

Does the distinction matter? Depends on your background; programmers, for example, are often driven to distraction in making sure their logical connectives work out in the right order (usually by copious use of brackets.) But there is often a real difference in meaning; the first interpretation given above describes a couple, for example, but the second doesnt.

The grouping of terms in Lojban grammar is particularly important when it comes to tanru. The way gismu group together in a tanru determines what that tanru means. For example, bad music magazine has in English two interpretations: a bad magazine about music, or a magazine about bad music. In Lojban, its equivalent
xlali zgike karni

has only the interpretation magazine about bad music, because the first two gismu (xlali zgike bad music) group together first. So it is important to be able to modify the grouping of gismu, so that we can make sure the tanru means what we actually intend it to mean. For that reason, Lojban has a couple of mechanisms in place for making tanru group together properly. If you are a programmer, or a mathematician, you have long ago made brackets your trusted aide in dealing with this kind of problem. So you wont be surprised to hear that Lojban has cmavo that act as

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parentheses, grouping gismu together. Those cmavo are not to and toi: those are reserved for your own parenthetical comments, and you never know when you might want to insert a snide remark in the middle of a particularly arduous tanru. Rather, the cmavo you need are ke, to open the grouping bracket, and kee, to close it. So if xlali zgike karni means a {bad music} magazine, then a bad {music magazine} is in Lojban:
xlali ke zgike karni kee

Now, kee is a terminator, like all the other terminators weve seen: ku, kei, kuo, vau, and so on. And like those terminators, it can be dropped out when no ambiguity will result. So if we know were at the end of the tanru, having reached the end of the selbri (because weve just bumped into a sumti, say, or a new sentence), then we also know that any open ke brackets must now close; so kee can be omitted. This means you wont necessarily see a kee close bracket after each ke open bracket:
.i mi pu zi te vecnu lo xlali ke zgike karni .i toe zanru lao gy. Eurythmics gy.

I just bought a bad {music magazine [}]. It dissed the Eurythmics.

Thats one way of grouping together gismu in tanru. The other way is to use a cmavo weve already seen in a related role: bo. When bo appears between two gismu, it means that those gismu group together more tightly than anything else. So an alternative way of saying bad {music magazine} is
xlali zgike bo karni

This means that zgike bo karni should count as a unit, to which the description xlali bad applies.

bo does the same job with sentences (.i bo, .i ba bo, .i senii bo all attach to only the preceding sentence),

with connectives (.e bo, gie bo), and so on. So if I want to say Jyoti and either Susan or Ranjeet, I would say
la djiotis. .e la suzyn. .onaibo la ranjit.

For that matter, ke can also be used with connectives (though not with sentences; they have their own kind of bracket, tuetuu.) So I could also say
la djiotis. .e ke la suzyn. .onai la ranjit. kee

where in most cases the kee may be left out.

Tip: You cant start a run of sumti with ke, for reasons of Lojban grammatical pedantry we wont go into here. Tip: An advantage of putting the connective before the two terms, or after the two terms, is that you can completely avoid this kind of ambiguity. The more geeky among you will have heard of Reverse Polish notation: this does arithmetic by placing the operators after the numbers they operate on (e.g. (2 + 3) 5 becomes 2 3 + 5 ), and so avoids having to use brackets. The same holds for Lojban forethought connectives: Jyoti and either Susan or Ranjeet is
ge la djiotis. gi gonai la suzyn. gi la ranjit.

and Either Jyoti and Susan, or Ranjeet is

gonai ge la djiotis. gi la suzyn. gi la ranjit.

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Chapter 14. Why didnt I think of that before? Since there is no ambiguity, you wont need bo or ke with forethought connectives.

Exercise 3
Gloss the following into English, using brackets to indicate their structure. For instance:
xlali zgike karni

( ( bad music ) magazine ) 1. xlali bo zgike karni 2. xlali zgike bo karni 3. ke xlali zgike karni 4. ke xlali zgike bo karni 5. xlali ke zgike ke karni ke tcidu 6. xlali zgike bo karni tcidu 7. xlali zgike ke karni tcidu 8. ke xlali zgike kee karni tcidu 9. xlali ke zgike karni kee tcidu 10. ke xlali zgike bo karni kee tcidu

Summary

In this lesson, we have covered: Forethought logical connectives (GA, GUhA) Uses for sets and sequences Non-logical connectives (ce, ceo, fau, bii, bio)

tanru-grouping cmavo (ke, kee, bo)

Vocabulary
cabdei certu ckafi cfipu

ckule glare

frumu gusni jamfu ladru moi ni skapi

stedu traji

sodva

today (cabna now + djedi day) x1 is an expert/pro/has prowess in/is skilled at x2 (event/activity) by standard x3 x1 (event/state) confuses/baffles x2 [observer] due to [confusing] property x3 (ka) x1 is made of/contains/is a quantity of coffee from source/bean/grain x2 x1 is school/institute/academy at x2 teaching subject(s) x3 to audien./commun. x4 operated by x5 x1 frowns/grimaces (facial expression) x1 is hot/[warm] by standard x2 x1 [energy] is light/illumination illuminating x2 from light source x3 x1 is a/the foot [body-part] of x2 x1 is made of/contains/is a quantity of milk from source x2; (adjective:) x1 is lactic/dairy convert number to ordinal selbri; x1 is (n)th member of set x2 ordered by rule x3 abstractor: quantity/amount abstractor; the amount that... x1 is a pelt/skin/hide/leather from x2 x1 is a/the head [body-part] of x2 x1 is made of/contains/is a quantity of a carbonated beverage/soda of flavor/brand x2 x1 is superlative in property x2 (ka), the x3 extreme (ka; default ka zmadu) among set/range x4

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Chapter 14. Why didnt I think of that before?

vimcu zmadu zbasu

x1 removes/subtracts/deducts/takes away x2 from x3 with/leaving result/remnant/remainder x4 x1 makes/assembles/builds/manufactures/creates x2 out of materials/parts/components x3 x1 exceeds/is more than x2 in property/quantity x3 (ka/ni) by amount/excess x4

Exercise 4
Translate from Lojban. 1. .i la jan. traji leka zirpu kei fo la jan. ce la ranjit. ce la djiotis. ce la suzyn. 2. .i jia la jan. gonai zmadu la ranjit. leni certu lenu dansu gi xalfekfri caku 3. .i la suzyn. cu bevri loi birje gi loi sodva fau gi la djiotis. fau la jan. 4. .i la jan. guu sutra gi djica pinxe lei sodva 5. .i la ranjit. cusku lu .i peipei do baza djica loi glare cnino bo se zbasu ckafi liu 6. .i la jan. cusku lu .i cnino skapi kia .i le ca skapi be mi cu stedu bii jamfu melbi liu 7. .i la ranjit. krixa lu .i ckafi liu 8. .i la jan. se cfipu catlu gie ba ke cmila gie cusku lu .i na goi doi bebna .i mi pinxe loi sodva liu

Exercise 5
Translate into Lojban. Use only forethought connectives. 1. Jyoti, who is holding and drinking coffee, speaks to Susan. 2. Its good that Zhang is here, and that you met him today. 3. Susan says Tell me about Ranjeet, not Zhang. 4. Is he an old schoolfriend of yours? 5. Just then, Susan hears Superfreak, the first out of the songs which are danced to (= to dance to.) 6. Susan shouts Yay!, and she and Ranjeet start dancing. 7. Jyoti stares at Zhang, who is smiling and building a chicken out of pretzels, and frowns. (Make a fuivla for pretzel based on nanba bread. Be careful, by the way: is Zhang really constructing a chicken?) 8. An alien space vehicle arrives, shines light, and removes the four friends from the disco. (Use ceo to join the steps in this somewhat unlikely sequence of events.)

Answers to exercises Exercise 1

1. .i la djiotis. nelci ga loi cidjrkari gi loi nanba 2. .i gu la djiotis. nelci loi cidjrkari gi la djiotis. citka loi cidjrkari 3. .i la djiotis. guu nelci gi citka loi cidjrkari 4. .i la djiotis. ge nelci loi cidjrkari gi xebni loi zirpu 5. .i gonai la djiotis. gi la suzyn. djuno leduu la jan. guonai zvati gi tadni (or: .i go la djiotis. ginai la suzyn. djuno leduu la jan. guonai zvati gi tadni) 6. .i la djiotis. nelci ge ga loi cidjrkari gi loi nanba gi loi jisra (Youre joining loi cidjrkari .a loi nanba to loi jisra) 7. .i ganai go la djiotis. ginai la suzyn. djuno leduu la jan. zvati gi la jan. se denpa

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Exercise 2
1. ce: You are picking a murderer out of a group, so the group you are picking from needs to be well-defined. That makes it a set. 2. bio: The dictionary does not contain the letters alpha and delta, of course, but all the Greek dialect words between those two letters; so we are dealing with a range. And however slow the Academy of Athens has been in getting the volumes out (67 years and counting), it has still done them in alphabetical order; so the order of the interval matters. 3. bio: This is still a range, as you are being asked to consult the text contained between those pages (you will also be looking at page 23.) The pages are also assumed to be in numerical order, so bio is preferred (although bii would not be incorrect: even if you looked through the pages backwards, you would still end up looking at the same pages.) 4. ceo: Even if you dont know what on earth a dactyl and an anapaest is (no, they are not components of dinosaurs), you can tell from the definition that the order of short and long syllables makes a difference. So the two terms involve types of sequences. 5. ce: You are still picking something out of a well-defined group, so Lojban uses a set. In fact, all superlatives in Lojban (fastest, smartest, most likely to dance the funky chicken) involve sets in the same way. 6. joi: Discussion is a group effort, and it does not involve ranges of people or sequences of people. We could speak of sets of people involved in discussion, if we assumed that youre definitely either in the discussion or out of it; but joi avoids having to commit to such a clearcut distinction. 7. .e: This is a perfectly logical connective: what Ranjeet and Zhang do with their shirts, they do independently.

Exercise 3
1. ( ( bad music ) magazine ) 2. ( bad ( music magazine ) ) 3. ( ( ( bad music ) magazine ) )The ke spans the entire tanru, so it doesnt make much of a difference in the meaning. 4. ( ( bad ( music magazine ) ) ) 5. ( bad ( music ( magazine reader ) ) ) 6. ( ( bad ( music magazine ) ) reader )bo binds zgike and karni together, so this becomes a three-part tanru, which still binds leftwards. 7. ( ( bad music ) ( magazine reader ) ) 8. ( ( ( bad music ) magazine ) reader )the kekee pair is merely reproducing the standard structure of a tanru. 9. ( ( bad ( music magazine ) ) reader ) 10. ( ( bad ( music magazine ) ) reader )

Exercise 4
1. Zhang is the most purple out of Zhang, Ranjeet, Jyoti and Susan. (Literally, Zhang is superlative in purpleness among... You would normally use a lujvoin this case ziryrai purplestto cut the sentence down to a manageable size: la jan. ziryrai la jan. ce la ranjit. ce la djiotis. ce la suzyn..) 2. Also, Zhang either dances better than Ranjeet, or drunk (at that time). (Or: when hes not drunk.) (Literally, again, the Lojban gives more detail: Zhang exceeds Ranjeet in the amount by which he is expert at dancing. And

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Chapter 14. Why didnt I think of that before? here, too, you can use a lujvo to make the sentence somewhat simpler: .i la jan. cremau la ranjit. lenu dansu, from certu zmadu more expert.) 3. Susan brings Jyoti a beer, and Zhang a soda. (Or soft drink, or pop, or coke, or cordial, or lolly waterwhatever your local word for carbonated beverages is.) 4. Zhang quickly (whether or not willingly) drinks the soda. (Remember that guu sutra gi djica means the same as sutra ju djica: it is the willingness, rather than the quickness, that is irrelevant.) 5. Ranjeet says Dont you think youll eventually want some hot, freshly-brewed coffee? (As the punctuation in the English shows, the Lojban words for freshly-brewedliterally the more prosaic newly constructedgo together. If the bo was not there, Ranjeet would be saying something like the coffee being novel in that it is hot ({hot [kind of] new} made coffee); perhaps the establishment doesnt normally have much of a water heating process, so any actual hot coffee would be a sensation.) 6. Zhang says New skin? Huh? My current skin is head-to-foot beautiful! (Zhang has misheard Ranjeet over the thumping music, not to mention the buzz in his own head. As this shows, you can use non-logical connectives to join together selbri as well as sumti: from head to toe snuck inside a tanru is as good a place as any for it.) 7. Ranjeet shouts Coffee! 8. Zhang looks confusedly, and afterwards (then) laughs and says No, silly! Im drinking soda! (Ranjeets exclamation can also be interpreted as an observativeLook! Coffee!, especially to a mind as addled as Zhangs.) Note: Just like .i, gie can be followed by a tense to indicate when the second term happened relative to the first term. If gie means and, then gie ba bo means and later, or and then. We saw someting similar with gi ca bo above. But bo still binds immediately to what went before it. So if we left things as they were, we would be saying something like Zhang looks confusedly and then laughs. He also says... In that case, it wouldnt necessarily be clear that he spoke after he stared at Ranjeet, dumbstruck: since logical AND says nothing about the time when things happen, that sentence would still be true even if Zhang had made his perceptive remark three days earlier. What we want is for the and later to apply to both him laughing and him talking. To force this to happen, we use the bracket ke instead of bo (ke can also take tense): Zhang {stares}, and then {laughs and says No, silly...} You might also want to refer to p. 364 of The Complete Lojban Language.

Exercise 5
1. .i la djiotis. noi gue jgari gi pinxe loi ckafi cu tavla la suzyn. 2. There are several ways you can say this:
.i lu .i lenu ge la jan. vi zvati gi do penmi ri ca le cabdei cu xamgu liu .i lu .i ge lenu la jan. vi zvati gi lenu do penmi ri ca le cabdei cu xamgu liu .i lu .i xamgu fa lenu ge la jan. vi zvati gi do penmi ri ca le cabdei liu .i lu .i xamgu fa ge lenu la jan. vi zvati gi lenu do penmi ri ca le cabdei liu

3. .i la suzyn. cusku lu .i ko tavla mi ge la ranjit. ginai la jan. 4. .i xu slabu ckule bo pendo do liu or .i xu slabu ke ckule pendo do liu (slabu ckule pendo would have meant friend from an old school instead.) 5. .icazibo la suzyn. tirna lao gy. Superfreak gy. nou le pamoi be lei selsanga poi se dansu or .icazibo la suzyn. tirna la
SUperfrik. noi pamoi lei selsanga poi se dansu

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Chapter 14. Why didnt I think of that before? 6. .i ge la suzyn. krixa zo .ui gi joigi la suzyn. gi la ranjit. coa dansu (if you want to emphasise that theyre dancing together) or .i ge la suzyn. krixa zo .ui gi ge la suzyn. gi la ranjit. coa dansu (if you dont.) 7. .i la djiotis. ge catlu la jan. noi ge cisma gi zbasu le jipci loi nanbrpretsele gi frumu (le jipci that which I describe as a chicken is the easiest way around the fact that Zhangs incipient masterpiece of contemporary art is not an actual flesh-and-blood, clucking chicken. Lojban being the logical language it is, youll probably find people insisting on the distinction, and saying things like facsimile of a chicken or chicken-like thing. Like we said, the final vowel of nanbrpretsele is pretty much up to youuntil theres a standard dictionary fuivla for it, at least.) Note: Strictly speaking, neither le jipci nor lo jipci actually work. le is non-veridical (that which I describe as), but it is also specific (the speaker, at least, must have a specific referent in mindwhich is not necessarily the case here.) lo is veridical, so it at least raises the expectation that the chicken clucks and lays eggsalthough many Lojbanists would allow for metaphorical extension, and say that a chicken made out of pretzels is still a chicken, of the species Chickenus Breadproductus Pretzelus. (Remember: all chickens have to have a species or breed (lo se jipci) to be called le jipci! Compare The Complete Lojban Language, Chapter 6.2, and the example of teddybears.) 8. .i lo fange kensa bo xe klama ceogi mou klama gi ceogi te gusni gi vimcu le vo pendo le dansydiu (Although fange ke kensa xe klama would also have been fine. fange kensa xe klama would have meant a vehicle intended only for alien spacewhich cant be right, since the spaceship has just paid planet Earth a surprise visit. Way surprising...)

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Chapter 15. Singled out: Isolating specific places

In this lesson, we look at three features of Lojban grammar which normally get relegated to the toohard basket. Each of them involves singling out a particular sumti from a bridi, as being somehow more special than the other sumti. The full logical machinery associated with these singlings out can get rather formidable, which is why Lojbanists tend to regard these features with some degree of awe. Hopefully well present these concepts to you with a minimum of fuss, in enough detail that you can go about using them comfortably in your Lojban.

Indirect questions
ma cilre la lojban.

A Lojban question word is a request to fill in the slot, wherever it appears in a sentence. So

is the question Who is learning Lojban? By the same token,

mi djica lenu ma cilre la lojban.

is the question I want who to learn Lojban?or, in actual English (since English likes to have its question words at the start of the sentence), Who do I want to learn Lojban? And
mi pu cusku leseduu ma cilre la lojban.

is I said who is learning Lojban?i.e. Who did I say is learning Lojban?

mi djuno leduu ma cilre la lojban.

Theres no reason duu should behave any differently than nu, let alone seduu; so

means I know that who is learning Lojban?i.e. Who do I know is learning Lojban?

What it does not mean is I know who is learning Lojbanas in I know the identity of the person learning Lojban. In a construction like that in English, you are not asking a real question; thats why this is called an indirect question. Instead, you are saying that you already know the answer to the question. You can tell that the word who in that statement is not a request for information, because it is not at the start of the sentence, theres no question mark (or questioning intonation), and the question word is not being emphasised.

Lojban does not use any of these workarounds; a question word is a question word in Lojban, wherever it happens to end up in the sentence. This means that mi djuno leduu ma cilre la lojban. can never be an indirect question: it is asking for an answer. (It is asking for an answer even if youre doing it rhetorically, although thats the kind of behaviour which Lojbanistsa level-headed bunch by most accounts, at least when theyre speaking in Lojbanmight not necessarily appreciate.) So what to do? Well, lets look at what you do know. Lets say the person learning Lojban is Fred. If I ask you the question ma cilre la lojban., you know what value to fill in the ma slot with: la fred. So you could just say

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Chapter 15. Singled out mi djuno leduu la fred. cilre la lojban.

For whatever reason, however, youre not telling me the actual nametotally within your prerogative. In fact, I could say about you that You know who is learning Lojbanbut because I dont know it, I have no name to fill in the who slot with.

So you know that someone is learning Lojban: do djuno leduu zoe cilre la lojban. And you can fill in the value of zoe, even though I cant. What we want is some word that would tell us the answer that goes here isnt being said, but it is known anyway. That word is the UI cmavo, kau. So we can say:
mi djuno leduu zoe kau cilre la lojban. do djuno leduu zoe kau cilre la lojban.

I know someone is learning Lojban, and I know who it is. You know someone is learning Lojban, and you know who it is.

kau says that the value of the word it attaches to is knownwhatever that word might be. So in fact,

you can put it next to a question word, and it will cancel out the question words force. mi djuno leduu ma kau cilre la lojban. means exactly the same as mi djuno leduu zoe kau cilre la lojban.and it has the advantage of looking just like the indirect questions were already familiar with.
Tip: Question words have the advantage that they are fairly devoid of content, so they dont make any presumptions you might not welcome. For example, if I know that no-one is learning Lojban, I can say mi djuno leduu makau cilre la lojban.; but I cannot say mi djuno leduu dakau cilre la lojban.because da by default means at least one entity.

Since kau belongs to selmao UI, you can place it pretty much anywhere. In particular, anywhere you can put a question word in Lojban, you can turn it into an indirect question by adding kau. So you can say I know how many people are learning Lojban, as
mi djuno leduu xo kau prenu cu cilre la lojban.

(Remember, xo is the question word for numbers.)

You can even make indirect questions of Lojbans more exotic question words. For example, in Lesson 11, the waiter asks Jyoti and Susan lanme jei bakni lamb or beef? Once they answer, he knows whether they want to eat lamb or beef; in Lojban,
bao lenu la djiotis. .e la suzyn. spuda kei le bevri cu djuno leduu re ra djica lenu citka loi lanme jei kau bakni

Vocabulary
farna rokci sepli gunro

simsa

x1 is the direction of x2 (object/event) from origin/in frame of reference x3 x1 rolls/trundles on/against surface x2 rotating on axis/axle x3; x1 is a roller x1 is a quantity of/is made of/contains rock/stone of type/composition x2 from location x3 x1 is apart/separate from x2, separated by partition/wall/gap/interval/separating medium x3 x1 is similar/parallel to x2 in property/quantity x3 (ka/ni); x1 looks/appears like x2

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Exercise 1
Express the following indirect questions in Lojban. Use Lojban question words to translate the English question words. 1. I want to know when you will talk to me. 2. I dont know why you dont talk to me. 3. Ive said who I thought was a fool. 4. Tell me where the beer is. 5. You said who I should give the book to. 6. Tell me how does it feel when youre on your own with no direction known like a rolling stone. (Not only is there a profusion of Dylan here, but this is kind of a trick question. But do translate it as an indirect one, anyway.)

Properties

We have seen, here and there, instances of Lojban expressions of properties. Lojban treats properties as abstractions, introduced by ka. There is nothing controversial about that; properties are things you can talk about (sumti), which involve relationships and characteristics (selbri.) So if xendo means kind, for instance, le ka xendo refers to kindness. The thing about properties, though, is that they are properties of something. They are associated, not just with a selbri, but with a particular place of the selbri. For example, kindness is not just le ka xendo, but the property of someone displaying kindnessas a characteristic of that someone. In other words, not just le ka xendo, but le ka ___ xendo, where ___ stands in for that someone.

As a further example, consider influence and susceptibility. Both involve the relationship expressed in Lojban as xlura: x1 (agent) influences/lures/tempts x2 into action/state x3 by influence/threat/lure x4 So the Lojban for influence is le ka xlura. And the Lojban for susceptibility is... le ka xlura? Strictly speaking, yes: both properties involve the same bridi, xlura.

But obviously, we cant have the same expression for both influence and susceptibility; we have to have a way of highlighting the place in the bridi we are interested in. Though the two properties involve the same bridi, they focus on different places of that bridi. Influence is the property associated with the x1 of xlura, the influencer. Susceptibility is the property associated with the x2 of xlura, the influencee. So how do we say that in Lojban? Lojbans solution to this problem is fairly similar to Lojbans approach to questions, as it turns out. Remember in Lesson 13 that the search for extraterrestrial intelligence was, in terms of Lojban, a search for the value to fit in the slot
leka ___ terdi bartu pensi

By the same token, influence is a property of things that fit into the x1 place of xlura; so you can think of influence as leka ___ xlura. If we know that mi fits into the slot, we have my influence; if we know that

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Chapter 15. Singled out la fred. fits into the slot, we have Freds influence. And susceptibility is a property of things that fit into the x2 place of xlura; so you can think of susceptibility as le ka xlura ___ (or le ka ___ se xlura.)

Lojban has a word for that slot associated with properties. It isnt ma, because youre not asking someone what fills the slot; youre just pointing out that theres a slot there that can be filled. It isnt kea either, because kea refers back to something youve already expressed as a sumti (though you might think of a relative clause as a property belonging to that sumti.) Property slots get their own KOhA cmavo, ceu. So:

Influence is le ka ceu xlura the property that x influences: anyone or anything that has that property can stand in for ceu.

Susceptibility is le ka xlura ceu the property that [something] influences x, or le ka ceu se xlura the property that x is influenced: anyone or anything that has that property can stand in for ceu.

And extraterrestrial intelligence is le ka ceu terdi bartu pensi the property that x is an earth-exterior thinker. You can tell whether youve found your Little Green Men by substituting them for ceu, and seeing if the bridi is true:
le ka lo fange pe la vulkan. cu terdi bartu pensi Lambda Note, Part 1: If you:
did Computer Science at University, and you didnt skip Theory of Computation in third year just

because it had all sorts of strange Greek letters and ivory tower mathematics in it;
did Computer Science at University, and skipped Theory of Computation in third year, but hacked

around with LISP a lot anyway;

did Linguistics at University, and did not run screaming from the Formal Semantics elective in third year

(if you were even offered it) just because it had all sorts of strange Greek letters and more mathematics than you were used to (i.e. none); then it will mean something to you that ceu is a lambda variable, and that
le ka ceu xlura da de di

corresponds to x.xendo(x,da,de,di) The rest of you (which includes 90% of all programmers and 99% of all linguists) can go ahead and forget I ever mentioned this.

If you cast your mind back to Lesson 7, youll remember that we split up the abstractions Lojban uses into two main types: events, using nu, and facts or propositions, using duu. A property, as introduced by ka, is still what we called there a reification. That means its just like duu: its something you hold in your mind about what happens in the world, rather than something that objectively happens in the world. The difference is, ka has an empty slot, occupied by ceu; and youre interested in the ka-clause only inasmuch as youre interested in what fills the slot. On the other hand, duu-clauses dont necessarily have any such slotalthough they can.
Note: This means that, when you get down to it, there is no real difference between leduu ceu xendo and leka ceu xendo. But as we discuss below, there is a real difference between leduu xendo and leka xendo: by default, ka is

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Chapter 15. Singled out assumed to contain ceu somewhere (since it is a property of something.) No such assumption is made for duu: leduu xendo is normally assumed to be just leduu zoe xendo; the fact that someone is kind, rather than the property

of someone being kind.

Most usage of ka in Lojban fits this pattern of filling a slot straightforwardly. This is particularly the case when a ka-asbtraction is required in the place structure definition of a gismu: a ka-clause is required, because by its definition the gismu involves that slot. So with sisku seek, you search for kaclauses, to find what will fill the slot. With karbi compare, you compare things to see how well they fit the slot. Or alternatively, the gismu by definition fills that slot, by relating the property to the value satisfying it. For example,
mi fange do leka ceu se krasi le bartu be le tcadu: mi barda leka le xadni be ceu cu clani: mi mansa do leka ceu pensi:

town (as applied to me.) applied to me.)

I am alien to you in the property of x1 is from out of

I am big in the property of x1s body is longi.e. x1 is tall (as

I satisfy you that the property x1 is intelligent applies to me.

What happens when you find the value that fills the slot? Thenand here Lojban parts ways with Englishyou no longer have a slot; so you no longer have a property. Youve gone back to duu. If mi mansa do leka ceu pensi, thats the same as saying do djuno leduu mi pensi. A property applying to a known entity is no longer a property at all in Lojban, but a factor (if you no longer have to reify it) an event.

Be careful here: what English (and in fact, most traditional usage) calls properties are often actually considered just states in Lojbanthat is, something that happens in the world, but without anybody lifting a finger. Being a runner (also known as running) is hard work; so were happy to think of it as an event: nu bajra. But being happy (also known as happiness) is something that just happens, without any work; so were inclined to call it ka gleki. But thats misleading. English distinguishes between running and happiness grammatically, because run is a verb and happy is an adjective. But verbs and adjectives dont mean anything to Lojban (or to many other languages), so theres nothing to say you cant say nu gleki instead. Much of the time, in fact, that is precisely what you should be saying. As a rule of thumb: if you wouldnt say ka bajra in a sentence, dont say ka gleki either.
Note: For instance, is illness a quality in the sentence Freds illness is more debilitating than Georges? Lets use running instead. If we translated more debilitating as a single lujvo, rubriamau, would we say leka la fred. bajra cu rubriamau leka la djordj. bajra? No; wed likely say lenu la fred. bajra cu rubriamau lenu la djordj. bajra. In fact, there is a quality involved in the sentence, if you expand it out fullybut its not the illness, but the debilitatingness: lenu la fred. bilma cu zmadu lenu la djordj. bilma kei leka ceu rinka lenu zoe ruble The event of Fred being ill exceeds the event of George being ill in the quality of causing someone to be weak. Tip: In older Lojban, youll often see phrases like leka mi gleki for the property of me being happy. Thats because we used to not know any better (ceu is a recent addition to the language), and were treating Lojban properties pretty much the way English does. The proper way to say this in Lojban is lenu mi gleki, or leduu mi gleki. Alternatively, if you want to emphasise that the property x1 is happy is being applied to you, you can say leka ceu gleki kei poi ckaji mia literal translation of the property x1 is happy as applied to me. Lambda Note, Part 2: The infinitesimal number of you that know about lambda calculus are by now thinking this is a pretty lame way of implementing beta-reduction. All I can say to that is, if you want LISP, you always know where to find it...

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Sometimes youll want to speak of properties of applying to two entities at once. For example, the cop wants to know who talked about the heist, and to whom:
le pulji cu djica lenu djuno leduu makau tavla makau le nu jemna zercpa.

In that case, hes looking for both x1s and x2s to fill in his ka-property:
le pulji cu sisku leka ceu tavla ceu lenu jemna zerlea To put it more formally, he is seeking pairs {.abu, by.} such that the proposition .abu tavla by. is true. Tip: By default, two different instances of ceu are two distinct entities. So the example given is not saying that the police are looking to someone who talked to themselves about the heist!

The main use for multiple instances of ceu is our old friend simxu: if we want to speak about reciprocality, we are very much interested in which two places are related through that reciprocality:
mi ce do simxu leka ceu tavla ceu lenu jemna zerlea

There are some reciprocalities that can be distinguished nicely in this way: simxu leka draci fi ceu ceu is a situation where people take turns writing plays for each other, while simxu leka draci fo ceu ceu is a situation where people take turns performing plays for each other.
Note: The quantity abstractor, ni the amount by which... can also take ceu. Had we actually looked at ni in this course at all, this piece of information might have been slightly more useful to you.

Vocabulary
ckire mamta

x1 is grateful/thankful to/appreciative of x2 for x3 (event/property) x1 is a mother of x2; x1 bears/mothers/acts maternally toward x2; [not necessarily biological]

Express the following qualities in Lojban, using ceu explicitly in all cases. 1. Gratitude 2. Similarity to Arnold Schwarzenegger 3. Motherhood 4. Having a mother 5. My similarity to Arnold Schwarzenegger 6. Being a place where people get anxious; creepiness, (one interpretation of) hauntedness (Hint: Use sumti tcita.)

Exercise 2

From sumti to abstraction: tua

When looking up words in a gismu list, you may have already noticed that, where languages like English have people or things as subjects and objects, Lojban often uses abstractions instead as gismu places. For example, in English, you say that someone is interesting, or something is interesting. In Lojban, you arent really meant to say either. The definition of cinri is: x1 (abstraction) interests/is interesting to x2; x2 is interested in x1

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In other words, as far as Lojban is concerned, its not things or people that are interesting, but actions or properties involving those things or people. For example, Jyoti cannot be said to be interesting simply by virtue of being Jyoti; the way Lojban puts it, its the things Jyoti does (or is) that are interestingthe way she talks about British sitcoms, her choice of headgear, her tendency to break into 80s songs after shes had a few drinks. (Oh, I forgot to tell you about all that. Maybe next course.) The same goes for fenki crazy. In almost every language, it is people that are called crazy. Only occasionally are actions also called crazy. Lojban, however, defines fenki as: x1 (action/event) is crazy/insane/mad/frantic/in a frenzy (one sense) by standard x2 In other words, as far as Lojban is concerned, craziness lies in actions, not in people; a crazy person is by definition someone who does crazy actions.
Note: This means that someone suffering from the particular forms of mental illness loosely called crazy wouldnt be called fenki in Lojbansince their condition is not primarily a matter of socially unaceptable actionsbut rather menli bilma: mentally ill.

For now, you may be prepared to accept this as an endearing quirk of Lojban. (If youre not, we explain why Lojban is all topsy-turvy like this in the next section.) But very often, you have no idea what to say is the selbri of that abstraction, or you dont particularly care to. For example, yes, Jyoti doing this, that and the other is what is interesting about her; but I may not know first-hand what exactly her particular talents are, or I may not feel like going into a five-minute spiel every time I merely want to point out that she is interesting. If I cant say the Lojban for Jyoti is interesting, I should at least be able to say something like Jyoti {doing some stuff Im not listing here} is interesting, or Some things about Jyoti are interesting. In other words, I have to say
lenu la djiotis. cu ___ cu cinri

but I shouldnt have to fill in that slot with an explicit selbri each time.

There are slots in Lojban sentences that we have in fact been leaving empty all the time. Remember zoe? zoe is the dont care value we leave implied in the unspecified places of bridi. For example, when I say mi klama le barja, Im not bothering to specify my point of origin, route, or vehicle. They are all implied to be zoe: mi klama le barja zoe zoe zoe. This means that there is a point of origin, a route and a vehicle involved, but we dont really care what they are.
zoe is a sumti; but it has a selbri equivalent, coe. coe can appear where any selbri can appear, but it

leaves the relationship between its sumti unspecified. So mi coe le barja means something like I thingummy the bar: the bar and I are in some relationship, but Im not bothering to say what it is. I might be going to it, coming from it, sleeping in it, refurbishing it, or hearing about my neighbour getting drunk in it once. It just doesnt matter enough for me to say what.

Now normally, you cant get away with this: if you leave out the selbri in your story, you pretty much have no story. But with these abstractions that we wish werent really abstractions, coe is just what you need: you can get away with making an abstraction containing only the sumti you want to talk about. You dont have to specify anything else in the abstractionespecially not the selbri. So if I want to say Jyoti is interesting, I need only say
lenu la djiotis. cu coe cu cinri

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Im still saying an abstraction involving Jyoti is what is interesting, so Im following the requirements of the gismu list. But thats all Im saying; what particular abstraction it is that is interesting, I am leaving entirely open. In the same way, if I want to say Zhang is crazy (or berserk, probably a closer translation of fenki), I dont have to enumerate the various wacky stunts he has pulled over the years. I can simply say that some stuff about Zhang is crazy, which in Lojban comes out as
lenu la jan. coe cu fenki

The value of coe could be

dasni [loi zirpu] dansu [la zgikrfanki jipci]

wears purple

tavla [bau la lojban.] speaks

dances the Funky Chicken Lojban

or whatever; were just not bothering to name it here.

Lojban can go one better, though. As you can tell, Lojban is going to have you saying lenu ___ cu coe kei quite often (and you never know when you might need that kei terminator); so it offers you an abbreviation: tua. tua da means lesuu da cu coe kei (where suu, you may recall, is the generic abstractor); so you can translate tua as some abstraction associated with..., or more colloquially, some stuff about.... tua is easily the most popular way of dealing with abstractions you wish werent there in Lojban; Lojban sentences using it come out fairly similar to the natural language sentences without abstractions that were used to seeing. So the usual Lojban for Jyoti is interesting is
tua la djiotis. cinri

and the usual Lojban for Zhang is crazy is

tua la jan. fenki

Vocabulary
cfari fanza nelci troci snuti djica

x1 desires/wants/wishes x2 (event/state) for purpose x3 x1 [state/event/process] commences/initiates/starts/begins to occur; (intransitive verb) x1 (event) annoys/irritates/bothers/distracts x2 x1 is fond of/likes/has a taste for x2 (object/state) x1 (event/state) is an accident/unintentional on the part of x2; x1 is an accident x1 tries/attempts/makes an effort to do/attain x2 (event/state/property) by actions/method x3

Some of these sentences need to be translated in Lojban with tua, and some dont. Supply the appropriate translation, in either case. 1. I tried the curry. 2. I wanted the curry. 3. I liked the curry. 4. My leaving was accidental.

Exercise 3

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Chapter 15. Singled out 5. Gratitude annoys me. 6. Curry annoys me. 7. The irritation has begun.

Raising: jai Warning

This section is long and complicated. On the plus side, its also the final section in the course.

Things werent always like this. In the 80s, the ancestor of Lojban still said that things were interesting, and people were crazy, just like most normal languages, and without detouring through abstractions. So what happened?

Well, what happened was that Lojbanists noticed how linguists have been analysing these concepts in natural languages, and how they were coming up with their own versions of selbri. Often, what was a noun in one part of the sentence, and a verb in another part, were brought together and considered to be underlyingly part of the same abstraction sumti.
Note: The word for selbri in English, by the way, is predicates; weve been avoiding it up to now, but we think you can handle the truth from now on...

A good example is the phrase I am difficult to annoy in English. At first sight, you might think that I is a sumti of difficult. And grammatically it is: its the subject. But logically it isnt: what were describing as difficult is not me. We cant say:

Who is difficult? Me (to annoy).

Whats actually going on is that, underlyingly, what is difficult is to annoy me: the action of getting me annoyed is what is hard to achievenot me! This is why English also allows you to say It is difficult to annoy me, and (if you squint a little) To annoy me is difficult. And sure enough, Lojban expresses this concept according to that underlying form:
lenu fanza mi cu nandu

The event of annoying me is difficult

So why did English pull that weird switcheroo with I am difficult to annoy? Basically, because when we talk, we arent concentrating in our minds on intangible abstractions like the event of annoying me, let alone the state of Jyoti having certain unspecified properties. Instead, we run little stories in our head, with heroes and villains: concrete heroes and villainspeople, for the most part. And as it happens, we make the subjects of our sentences be the heroes and villains were concentrating on. (Thats what a subjects ultimate job is: to present what were concentrating on.) So by pulling a switcheroo like that, were not talking about abstractions and events any more; the subject of the sentence is now our perennially favourite subjectnamely me: its me that is difficult to annoy. (Yes, it is all about me...) This process is called in linguistics raising, because it raises concrete

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subjects (and objects) we want to talk about, out of the haziness of an abstraction sumti (or clausal argument, to use English logical terminology.)

Once the requisite number of Lojbanists did an undergraduate course in syntax (you may commence throwing darts at effigies of Nick Nicholas at your leisure), it was realised that there were a lot of gismu whose place structures contained both a raised concrete sumti (usually x1), and an abstraction sumti which itself contained the first sumti. For example, the place structure of fenki used to be x1 is crazy in behaviour x2 (abstraction) by standard x3 But any abstraction that would go into x2 would contain the x1 sumti: any crazy behaviour would automatically be the behaviour of the crazy person. For example, youd get
la jan. fenki lenu la jan. dasni loi zirpu la jan. fenki lenu la jan. dansu la jipci la jan. fenki lenu la jan. tavla bau la lojban.

The question then became: does the x1 tell us anything the x2 wasnt already telling us? We know who was involved in the crazy behaviour, because that person would be a sumti inside x2. (More specifically, he or she would be the active party: someone hitting random strangers is crazy; someone being hit by random strangers isntalthough arguably someone allowing themselves to keep being hit by random strangers is.) Was there any reason, then, to grant the person an extra place in the overall bridi? The decision was, no: behaviour is what is crazy, so you can work out that the person acting out the behaviour is the crazy person. Theres no need to have an extra place for the person, when you can already work out who they are. The same conclusion was arrived at for cinri: it is abstractionsevents and qualitiesthat attract interest; and an interesting person is simply a person involved in an interesting abstraction. All well and good; but natural languages do raising for a reason. So when Lojban has its gismu without raising, it gains in eliminating redundancy and logical muddledness; but it loses in naturalness. We like talking about people rather than abstractions in our languages; and Lojban should not go out of its way to form an exception to this. There is a solution of sorts to this problem using tua; but it doesnt actually do what raising does in natural languages: it doesnt change the x1 place from an abstraction to a concrete sumti. And there are times you will want to do just that. One example is joining bridi-tails. In English, you can say Jyoti is interesting and beautiful. This is based on two sentences (Jyoti is interesting, Jyoti is beautiful) which have the same subject. So we can easily combine them into a single sentence. In Lojban, the equivalent sentences are
tua la djiotis. cinri

and
la djiotis. melbi

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There is no way youre going to join those two bridi together with gie: they simply do not have their first sumti in common. But theyre both somehow about Jyoti; so you really should be able to work around this.

An even more important instance when you want raising is in forming sumti out of this kind of gismu. A sumti means whatever goes into the x1 of its selbri. If la djiotis. ninmu Jyoti is a woman, then I can describe Jyoti as lo ninmu a woman. If lemi karce cu xe klama le gusta fu mi My car is a vehicle to the restaurant for me, then I can describe lemi karce as lo xe klama a vehicle. So how do I say that someone is a cheat, or a deceiver? The gismu for deceive, tcica, has the place structure x1 (event/experience) misleads/deceives/dupes/fools/cheats/tricks x2 into x3 (event/state) This means that, while in English we say that x1 (person) deceives x2 into doing x3, by doing x4, in Lojban the person and the action are merged into the one place. That makes lo tcica a trick, not a trickster; a deception, and not a deceiver. To say that someone is a trickster or a deceiver, we need to use tua: tua da tcica. But you cant put lo in front of tua da: the deceiver has to be the x1 of some selbri, in order to get their own sumti. The solution to this is to force Lojban to have raising after all, changing the place structure of the selbri involved. This works just like se changing the place structure of its selbri, swapping its first and second place. If we put jai in front of a selbri, its x1 place changes from an abstraction, to any sumti contained within the abstraction. Lets try this with a few sentences:
lenu la jan. dasni loi zirpu cu fenki la jan. cu jai fenki

lenu la djiotis. cu coe cu cinri la djiotis. cu jai cinri

tua la ranjit. tcica la suzyn. la ranjit. jai tcica la suzyn.

lenu fanza mi cu nandu mi jai nandu

Youll notice that, with these new place structures, the Lojban phrases sound pretty much like their English equivalents. For example,
la djiotis. jai cinri

Jyoti is interesting
la ranjit. jai tcica la suzyn.

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Ranjeet deceives Susan We can now do with jai those things we couldnt before. The Lojban for Jyoti is interesting and beautiful, for example, is
la djiotis. jai cinri gie melbi

Thats because Jyoti goes in the x1 place of jai cinri, just as it goes into the x1 place of melbi. And if I want to make a sumti meaning deceiver or trickster, I can use jai to do it:
tua la ranjit. tcica la ranjit. jai tcica lo jai tcica

However, mi jai nandu does not correspond to I am difficult to annoy. In switching a concrete sumti for the original x1the abstraction that was difficultwe have lost the abstraction itself: there is

nothing in mi jai nandu that means to annoy. But not to worry: Lojban allows you to keep the original abstraction in the bridi by preceding it with fai. fai is a place tag like fa and fe; it effectively adds a new place to the bridi. So I am difficult to annoy is matched almost word-for-word by the Lojban sentence
mi jai nandu fai lenu fanza mi

And we can apply this pattern further afield; for example, the book took three months to write is in Lojban properly
lenu finti le cukta cu masti li ci

To write the book had a month-duration of three

Raising allows the slightly more familiar-looking

le cukta cu jai masti li ci fai lenu finti jai has not proven as popular as tua, presumably because it involves a fairly thorough rearrangement

of place structuresand has the whiff about being somehow un-Lojbanic. But as weve seen, it allows you to talk about things in a way that is in many ways more natural; and though it belongs to advanced Lojban, it is a feature you will find it useful to be familiar with.

Exercise 4
That was pretty heavy going. You can relax: this exercise will go easy on you. (You still have the final translation exercises to go through, after all!) Where possible, and by all means necessary, recast the abstractions in the following sentences so that they use jai (and fai, where applicable.) 1. .i tua mi nabmi 2. .i leduu mi xebni loi kensa fange cu nabmi 3. .i mi djuno tua la lojban. 4. .i mi djuno leduu la lojban. cu bangu kei la lojban. 5. .i lenu mi ckire da cu nibli lenu mi se xamgu tua da (Dont try and be too clever hereit wont work...) 6. .i lenu lenu la jan. xalfekfri cu nabmi cu cizra (Only eliminate one level of abstraction.) 7. .i da poi lenu fanza kea cu nandu cu zvati (Reduce this, then see if you cant reduce it a little more...)

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Summary

In this lesson, we have covered: Indirect questions (kau) Property variables (ceu)

Raising (coe, tua, jai, fai)

And with that, we have reached the end of the Lojban for Beginners course! There are several bits of the grammar of Lojban not covered here; but you now have the essentials with which to start using Lojban, and you are in a good position to pick up the restpreferably from The Complete Lojban Language, which is a fairly easy read for a reference grammar. Moreover, most of the Lojban you will see will stick fairly closely to the grammar covered here. .i .ao do se zdile tua le ve ctuca gie ba gleki
lenu pilno la lojban.

Vocabulary
Note: Remember the error quote lou... leu from Lesson 7.
birti cipra

curmi dicra drata drani

kumfa logji mebri rufsu tarci remna sonci

kucli

jarco

x1 is certain/sure/positive/convinced that x2 is true x1 (process/event) is a test for/proof of property/state x2 in subject x3 (individ./set/mass) x1 (agent) lets/permits/allows x2 (event) under conditions x3; x1 grants privilege x2 x1 (event) interrupts/stops/halts/[disrupts] x2 (object/event/process) due to quality x3 x1 isnt the-same-thing-as/is different-from/other-than x2 by standard x3; x1 is something else x1 is correct/proper/right/perfect in property/aspect x2 (ka) in situation x3 by standard x4 (Note: when people say correct things, that does not automatically make them correct/proper/right/perfect) x1 (agent) shows/exhibits/displays/[reveals]/demonstrates x2 (property) to audience x3 x1 is curious/wonders about/is interested in/[inquisitive about] x2 (object/abstract) x1 is a room of/in structure x2 surrounded by partitions/walls/ceiling/floor x3 (mass/jou) x1 [rules/methods] is a logic for deducing/concluding/inferring/reasoning to/about x2 (duu) x1 is a/the brow/forehead [projecting flat/smooth head/body-part] of x2 x1 is a human/human being/man (non-specific gender-free sense); (adjective:) x1 is human x1 is rough/coarse/uneven/[grainy/scabrous/rugged] in texture/regularity x1 is a soldier/warrior/fighter of army x2 x1 is a star/sun with stellar properties x2

Exercise 5
Translate from Lojban. 1. .i le vo pendo na djuno le duu ri zvati ma kau mui ma kau 2. .i la jan. cusku lu .i mi cazi ckire dai tua loi glare ke cnino se zbasu ckafi liu 3. .i la djiotis. se cinri leka ceu cizra pe le kumfa poi dy. nenri 4. .i la suzyn. cusku lu .i .ue le vi canko noi jarco tua loi tarci cu pei jai se xanka liu 5. .i la ranjit. cusku lu .i goi fa jia le re fange noi jarco leka le mebri poe ceu cu rufsu liu 6. .i pa fange poi simsa lo sonci cu jai cfari fai lenu lanli le terdi pendo kei gie cusku lou .uxrup .ua. doglau. latl. tcak.
val. tca. leu

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Chapter 15. Singled out 7. .i la ranjit. kucli leduu le fange cu tavla bau ma kau 8. .i le ka tua ceu se kucli cu se jundi le drata fange noi cusku zoi gy. Greetings people of the planet ... um... Saturn? gy. 9. .i la jan. cusku lu .i tua le fange na drani soa da liu

Translate into Lojban. Use ceu in quality abstractions. Use jai instead of tua wherever possible. 1. Susan says Excuse me, but I think you are uncertain about where you arewhich is Earth. 2. The alien says You are correct. 3. We are, uh, merely testing you for terrestrial intelligence. 4. Jyoti says You could have done that and not have interrupted our dancing. 5. Ranjeet says And also, if you knew that we are terrestrial people and intelligent, then you also knew that we are terrestrial intelligences. (Use forethought connectives.) 6. The alien says Are you the radio transmitter? 7. Ranjeet says I am one of the radio transmitters. 8. But mi poonai cradi is more logically correct. 10. The alien says xu m n m q oq. w d pux, which is translated as Human logic. Yuck. 9. The alien frowns, says You are allowed to leave, and un-removes the friends from the dance hall.

Exercise 6

Answers to exercises Exercise 1

1. mi djica lenu mi djuno leduu do ba tavla mi ca ma kau (You can place the ca ma kau anywhere after leduu.) 2. mi na djuno leduu do na tavla mi mui ma kau (Same goes for mui ma kau.) 3. mi bao cusku leseduu mi pu jinvi leduu ma kau bebna (Yes, Lojban can get prolix...) 4. ko cusku leseduu le birje cu zvati ma kau or ko cusku leseduu birje vi ma kau (... except, perhaps, where it matters most! The observative in the second version actually works: Beer! Where?!) 5. do pu cusku leseduu mi bilga lenu mi dunda le cukta ma kau or (if you want to risk the attitudinal) do pu cusku
leseduu mi .ei dunda le cukta ma kau

6. OK, this doesnt have to be that close (let alone rhyme), and in fact the English is closer to a direct than an indirect question, but this is something like ko cusku fi mi fe leseduu pei kau do sepli gie na djuno le farna gie simsa lo gunro rokci. Told you this was kind of a trick question...

Exercise 2
1. le ka ceu ckire 2. le ka ceu simsa la arnold. cfartseneger. (or lao gy. Arnold Schwarzenegger gy., if you prefer. The Lojban sound system (phonology) doesnt allow cv in sequence; this is something you can worry about more in your further Lojban studies. See The Complete Lojban Language, p. 36) 3. le ka ceu mamta

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Chapter 15. Singled out 4. le ka mamta ceu or le ka ceu se mamta 5. le ka ceu simsa la arnold. cfartseneger. kei poi ckaji mi (or, of course, le duu mi simsa la arnold. cfartseneger., which actually means the same thing.) 6. le ka xanka vi ceu. A little contrived, we admit.

Exercise 3
1. .i mi troci tua le cidjrkari (What you actually try is to eat itor, on occasion, to keep it down.) 2. .i mi djica tua le cidjrkari (This usually comes as a shock to people learning Lojban, but you cant actually want objects, only events. The event you usually want is to be in possession of the object, in some way or other.) 3. .i mi nelci le cidjrkari (The gismu list explicitly allows nelci to involve both objects and events; so you dont need tua here. This makes nelci quite different to djica.) 4. .i lenu mi cliva cu snuti (No surprise there; leaving corresponds to an abstraction.) 5. .i leka ckire cu fanza mi 6. .i tua le cidjrkari cu fanza mi (Unlike gratitude, curry is certainly not an abstraction.) 7. .i le fanza cu cfari (Yes, you read correctly. To fit the x1 of cfari, a sumti doesnt actually have to look like an abstraction; it just has to mean an abstraction. Anything that can be described as le fanza is going to be an abstraction, because of the place structure of fanza. So since the x1 of fanza is a state or event, and the x1 of cfari is also a state or event, they can both be describing the same thingwithout needing to strain abstractions out of one or the other using tua.)

Exercise 4
1. .i mi jai nabmi I am a problem. 2. .i mi jai nabmi fai leduu mi xebni loi kensa fange I am a problem in [the fact] that I hate space aliens. 3. .i la lojban. jai se djuno mi Lojban is known to me. (We did say all means necessary...) 4. .i la lojban. jai se djuno mi la lojban. fai leduu la lojban. cu bangu Of Lojban, it is known to me about Lojban that Lojban is a language. (As this indicates, the x3 place of djuno is raised out of its x2 place. Since you have wide liberty in stating what you know about a subject, however, this wont necessarily always be the case:
.i mi djuno leduu loi cidro ku joi loi kijno cu cupra loi djacu kei loi xumske

I know about chemistry that hydrogen and oxygen makes water 5. .i mi/da cu jai nibli lenu mi se xamgu tua da kei fai lenu mi ckire da, or .i mi/tua da jai se nibli lenu mi ckire da kei fai lenu mi se xamgu tua da No real English equivalent; the original sentence is Me being grateful to x necessitates that I have been benefitted by x. 6. .i lenu la jan. xalfekfri cu jai cizra fai lenu nabmi Zhang being drunk is strange in that it is a problem or .i lenu la jan. jai nabmi fai lenu xalfekfri cu cizra Zhang being a problem in that he is drunk is strange. Note: Can you eliminate both abstractions? For the record, yes you can, by applying jai twice:
.i la jan. jai jai cizra fai xi pa lenu xalfekfri kei fai xi re lenu nabmi

Messily, we now have two fai places: the Lojban subscript phrases xi pa subscript 1 and xi re subscript 2 helpfully keep them apart. Youre not really encouraged to do this kind of thing, though; after all, jai was intended to make Lojban more naturalnot more wacky!

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Chapter 15. Singled out 7. da poi kea jai nandu fai lenu fanza da cu zvati x such that x is difficult to annoy is here. You do need to indicate somehow who is being annoyed in the fai-clause. One way of doing so is to leave the raised sumti in, as weve just done: fai lenu fanza da cu zvati. Another is to make the raised place of the fai-clause its x1, conventionally its most important place: da poi kea jai nandu fai lenu se fanza cu zvati.
lenu fanza should be a sumti, with nandu as its selbri. This gives le jai nandu be fai lenu fanza cu zvati

Since what youre describing is a thing or person (a person, in this case), that means that da poi kea jai nandu fai

The one difficult to annoy is here. If you came up with that, we hereby dub thee King/Queen of Lojban! .i ko jgira! If not, well, thats OK, too; this kind of expression isnt all that popular yet, so youre not at a terrible disadvantage if you dont use it...

Exercise 5
1. The four friends do not know where they are, or why they are there. (You can ask more than one question in a sentence in Lojban, direct or indirect.) 2. Zhang says Right now, I would be grateful for a hot, freshly-brewed coffee. (You are grateful in Lojban for events rather than objects, so fully expanded, .i la jan. ckire dai lenu kakne lenu pinxe loi glare ke cnino se zbasu ckafi.) 3. Jyoti is interested in the weirdness of the room she is in. (pe is another way of associating abstractions with specific objects.) 4. Susan says Wow! This window, which shows the stars, is in my opinion something to be anxious about. (se xanka describes an event that provokes anxiety, so jai se xanka describes a thing involved in the event that provokes anxiety. Strictly speaking, Susan is probably misusing jarco...) 5. Ranjeet says So are the two aliens, who show that their foreheads are rough or who exhibit roughness in their foreheads. (... Ranjeet, of course, cannot help but be correct in his usage of jarco.)

6. One alien who is like a soldier starts analysing the Earthling friends, and says uxrup w o l w l t t qv l t (A lot of you may have guessed the language the alien is speaking. You are correct, and lets leave it at that, shall we?) 7. Ranjeet is curious about what language the aliens are speaking in. (No, I havent clued him in...) 8. Being an object of curiosity is something noticed by the other alien, who says (in English) Greetings people of the planet ... um... Saturn? 9. Zhang says Stuff about the aliens is not right in most regards. (In other words, there are properties involving these aliens that are not correct in most regards; for example, their sense of direction.)

Exercise 6
1. .i la suzyn. cusku lu .i taa dou pei do na birti leduu do zvati ma kau pou la terdi liu 2. .i le fange cu cusku lu .i do jai drani (Not do drani, which would mean You, as Susan, are a correct (or perfect) human being; it is only one aspect of Susan, namely what she has just said, which is being described here as correct.) 3. .i mia .y. jai cipra poo leka ceu terdi pensi kei do liu (You could say .i mia .y. jai cipra poo leka do pou ceu terdi pensi kei liu, because its the person with the quality being tested that is the test subject. But for practical reasons, Lojban hasnt eliminated this particular redundancy, so you might as well exploit it.) 4. .i la djiotis. cusku lu .i do pu kakne lenu goi gienai jai dicra lenu mia dansu liu (In Lojban, only events interrupt; latex-foreheaded aliens are involved in interrupting.)

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Chapter 15. Singled out 5. .i la ranjit. cusku lu .i jia ganai do pu djuno leduu mia ge terdi prenu gi pensi gi do djuno leduu mia terdi pensi liu (Ranjeet can never resist a good syllogism.) 6. .i le fange cu cusku lu .i xu do du le cradi liu (A legitimate use of du, since to the alien The radio transmitter and You refer to the same person.) 7. .i la ranjit. cusku lu .i mi me le cradi (If you want to emphasise the plurality of the transmitters, you could say .i mi me le suo re cradi I am one of the two or more radio transmitters.) 8. .i kui lu mi poonai cradi liu cu zmadu fi leka ceu logji drani liu (Although a person saying something correct is not eligible to be the x1 place of drani, the correct thing that they say is eligible: drani is not by definition restricted to abstractions.) 10. .i le fange cu cusku zoi gy. xu m n m q oq. w d pux gy. noi se fanva fu lu .i remna logji .aunai liu (or, in Lojban phonetic approximation, lou xuman. mekok. .uedj. pux. leu.) 9. .i le fange cu frumu gie cusku lu .i do jai se curmi fai lenu cliva liu gie toe vimcu le pendo le dansydiu

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Appendix A. Unsettled Business

Lojban is a young language, but a language which prides itself on being fully and explicitly documented... almost always. In a couple of instances, topics alluded to in these lessons are still somewhat up in the air. Though what the lessons themselves say about Lojban grammar you can rely on, there are some side issues on which the dust has not yet settled as of this writing. This appendix covers two issues in particular; you do not need to go through this on your first reading of the lessons, but once you start reading, writing, and speaking Lojban, this appendix tries to explain some things you may bump into, and which might strike you as odd.

Embedded voa

In Lesson 8, we said that voa refers back to the first sumti of this bridi. This is all well and good when your sentence only contains one bridi. But when it doesntand it often doesntwe have a problem. In
la kris. djuno leduu la pat. prami voa

does voa refer to la kris. (Chris knows that Pat loves her), or la pat. (Chris knows that Pat loves herself)? In
la kris. djuno leduu la pat. prami la djun. soi voa

does voa swap la djun. with la pat. (Chris knows that Pat loves June and vice versa, that they love each other), or with la kris. (Chris knows that Pat loves June, and June knows that Chris loves Pat)?

The answer will, perhaps, shock you. In both cases, voa is acting as what is called in linguistics a reflexive: it refers back to something in the same sentence. In natural languages, reflexives almost always refer back to subjects; and in Lojban, the x1 place is as close as you will get to a subject. The difference is, when you have this kind of embedding, the reflexive can refer back to the subject of the verb it is immediately tied to (short-distance reflexive), or it can refer all the way back to the subject of the entire sentence (long-distance reflexive.)

Now, herself in English is a short-distance reflexive: if Chris knows that Pat loves herself, then Chris knows that Pat loves Pat, not Chris. Reflexives in almost all languages are short-distance; relatively few languages allow their reflexives to be long-distance as well as short-distance (Chinese), or have longdistance reflexives distinct from short-distance (Icelandic). So if voa corresponds to herself, then it too is short-distance. And here, we have some unfortunate confusion. The Complete Lojban Language describes voa as shortdistance. But the earlier material defining the language had it as long-distance; and that is in fact how just about all Lojbanists use it.

Why would Lojbanists do something seemingly so perverse, and contrary to how most languages work? Basically, because their attitude towards pro-sumti is quite different to normal language attitudes towards pronouns. Lojbanists would like to have unambiguous pro-sumtipro-sumti whose reference can be determined with certainty. Now, to do a short-distance reflexives job (refer to something in the same bridi), you can very often use ri instead of voa. But to do a long-distance

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reflexives job (refer to something in the main bridi of the sentence), ri usually will not work, because you will have mentioned other sumti in between. This leaves you stuck with ra, which is deliberately as vague as natural language pronouns. But, reasons the average Lojbanist, if I wanted natural language vagueness, Id be speaking a natural language. And because I will need to refer back to sumti of the main sentence often (main and embedded bridi tend to involve the same cast of characters), Id rather voa serve as an unambiguous way of doing just that. So whether because it was what they got used to in 1991 (and they didnt want to relearn the language in 1997), or because they thought voa would be more useful that way, Lojbanists interpret la kris. djuno leduu la pat. prami voa as saying that Chris knows that Pat loves her, not herself. So Lojbanists use voa as a long-distance reflexive. ... almost always. There are two occasions when you will occasionally see short-distance interpretations instead. The first is when the long-distance interpretation doesnt make sense for some reason. For example, the x1 place of the main bridi contains the embedded bridi containing voaso a long-distance reading would get terribly recursive: lenu la suzyn. jmina fi le voa ctebi cinta cu cinri makes sense as Susan putting on her lipstick is interesting, but not as the horridly recursive Susan putting on xs lipstick is interestingwhere x is Susan putting on xs lipstick, where x is Susan putting on xs lipstick, where x is Susan putting on xs lipstick...) The second occasion is (you guessed it) soivoa. People are used to thinking of soivoa as vice versa, which forces a short-distance interpretation. And while there are reasons you would want voa in general to be a long-distance reflexive, there isnt much occasion for a long-distance reciprocal.

If usage to date were the only thing that determined the meaning of Lojban words (as is usually believed by the community), we might say that voa is by default long-distance, but becomes shortdistance under special circumstances (such as soivoa.) But past usage is not the only factor in determining what Lojban words mean. Lojbanists cherish their precious few unambiguous pro-sumti, and most would rather not lose one. So, while some Lojbanists have said (and will likely continue to say) things like la kris. djuno leduu la pat. prami la djun. soi voa, meaning that Pat and June love each other, most Lojbanists think they are being wrong, and would prefer something like la kris. djuno leduu la pat. prami la djun. soi ri.
Note: The phrase la djun. soi ri counts as one sumti, so thankfully ri here does not refer to June!

Incidentally, there are truly unambiguous alternatives to voa, if youre not comfortable with the way this is heading. We wont explain them here, but you might be able to guess how they work anyway. The guaranteed short-distance reflexive in Lojban is lenei, and the guaranteed long-distance reflexive is lenoaxiro. (lenoa is enough when there is only one level of bridi nesting.) In the unlikely case your use of voa is met with blank, uncomprehending stares, you can try using these instead.

Unfilled places in ka-abstractions

When there is no ceu in the abstraction, there is some controversy as to how the ka-abstraction is to be interpreted. In many instances, the existence of a slot to be filled by ceu is required by the definition of the bridi itself. For example, sisku leka pensi makes no sense, unless you are looking for a specific something that fits a ceu slot in pensi.

For such instances, the location of ceu is ambiguous, and The Complete Lojban Language mentions no convention having arisen, like with kea, on where it goes by default. The current default assumption is

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Appendix A. Unsettled Business

that ceu here behaves like kea, and occupies the first empty place. This means that, while le ka xlura without ceu can potentially mean both influence and susceptibility, the default assumption is that it means influence, while le ka se xlura means susceptibility. Likewise, le ka xendo can usually be assumed to mean le ka ceu xendo the property of people being kind, and probably not le ka xendo fi ceu the property of an action being something in which kindness is shown (although that action is frequently what is meant in English by kindness.)

A more contentious issue is, whether this should hold for all ka-abstractions, wherever they may occur. For example, does mi tavla fi leka xendo mean the same thing as mi tavla fi leka ceu xendo zoe zoe? Are you saying you are talking about kindness, as a property specifically applied to the person showing the kindness? The majority view as of this writing is yes. This means that ka is treated the same, whether it appears as a sumti of sisku or tavla. The catch is, when ka was originally invented, ceu didnt exist yet. And the original definition of ka refers not to properties at all, but to qualities.

Property and quality are fairly abstract, as words of English go, so this may not seem to make any difference. However, the objection that has been raised is that ka shouldnt always be regarded as singling out one or two places. The quality of kindness, it is argued, does not single out the person being kind, or the person to whom the kindness is shown (which is what a property does.) Instead, it concentrates only on the selbri of the relationship: what it means to say that a relationship of kindness holds, whoever is involved in it. This view is not universally held; at least some of the Lojbanists who think ka is all about being a property of something specific, think this notion is better expressed instead by sio, the abstractor defined as idea, concept.

Talk at this level of abstraction is not something youre likely to run into the moment you start using Lojban. It does explain, however, why youll see property used a lot here, but quality a lot elsewhere. It may also explain why you will see some grown Lojbanists blanch at the sight of a ceu...

185

Appendix B. Vocabulary
.ai .au .ao .abu .a

.i jo

.i jenai

.i jei

.i je

.i ja

.eu

.eo

.enai

.ei

.ee

.ebu

.e

.au

sumti or a hope interest desire desire sumti and e competence obligation sumti but not request suggestion sentence or sentence and sentence conn? sentence but not sentence iff sentence xor sentence whether sentence only if sentence link belief i approval agreement fear love sumti iff o complaint sumti xor patience relaxation sumti whether discovery u wonder surprise amusement happiness repentance pity hesitation

.ia

.i

.i naja

.i ju

.i jonai

.ie .iu .ii

.ie

.ibu

.o

.y

.uu

.uu

.ui

.ui

.ue

.ue

.ubu

.ua

.u

.ou

.oo

.onai

.oi

.obu

logical connective: sumti afterthought or letteral for a attitudinal: hope despair attitudinal: interest disinterest repulsion attitudinal: intent indecision rejection/refusal attitudinal: desire indifference reluctance logical connective: sumti afterthought and letteral for e attitudinal: competence incompetence/inability attitudinal: obligation freedom logical connective: sumti afterthought x but not y attitudinal: request negative request attitudinal: suggestion abandon suggest warning logical connective: sentence afterthought or logical connective: sentence afterthought and logical connective: sentence afterthought connective question logical connective: sentence afterthought x but not y logical connective: sentence afterthought biconditional/iff/ifand-only-if logical connective: sentence afterthought exclusive or logical connective: sentence afterthought whether-or-not logical connective: sentence afterthought conditional/only if sentence link/continuation; continuing sentences on same topic attitudinal: belief skepticism disbelief letteral for i attitudinal: approval non-approval disapproval attitudinal: agreement disagreement attitudinal: fear security attitudinal: love no love lost hatred logical connective: sumti afterthought biconditional/iff/if-andonly-if letteral for o attitudinal: complaint pleasure logical connective: sumti afterthought exclusive or attitudinal: patience mere tolerance anger attitudinal: relaxation composure stress logical connective: sumti afterthought whether-or-not attitudinal: discovery confusion/searching letteral for u attitudinal: wonder commonplace attitudinal: surprise not really surprised expectation attitudinal: amusement weariness attitudinal: happiness unhappiness attitudinal: repentance lack of regret innocence attitudinal: pity cruelty er (hesitation)

186

Appendix B. Vocabulary
.ybu

ba

.yybu

.yy

y h after sad emphasize next compelled by run bundle bovine Esperanto language great bank perfective force big bar out bite exaggeration in language link sumti foolish request to send link more sumti transfer end linked sumti north carry

badri bae bai bajra

bakfu bakni bangrnesperanto bangu banli

banxa bao bapli barda barja

be

bau

bau

batci

bartu

bebna bee

bei

benji beo

berti

bevri

elidable terminator: end linked sumti in specified description x1 is to the north/northern side [right-hand-rule pole] of x2 according to frame of reference x3 x1 carries/hauls/bears/transports cargo x2 to x3 from x4 over path x5; x1 is a carrier/[porter]

letteral for y letteral for letteral for h time tense relation/direction: will [selbri]; after [sumti]; default future tense x1 is sad/depressed/dejected/[unhappy/feels sorrow/grief] about x2 (abstraction) forethought emphasis indicator; indicates next word is especially emphasized bapli modal, 1st place (forced by) forcedly; compelled by force ... x1 runs on surface x2 using limbs x3 with gait x4 x1 is a bundle/package/cluster/clump/pack [shape/form] containing x2, held together by x3 x1 is a cow/cattle/kine/ox/[bull/steer/calf] [beefproducer/bovine] of species/breed x2 x1 is the language Esperanto used by x2 to express/communicate x3 (sio/duu, not quote) x1 is a/the language/dialect used by x2 to express/communicate x3 (sio/duu, not quote) x1 is great/grand in property x2 (ka) by standard x3 x1 is a bank owned by/in banking system x2 for banking function(s) x3 (event) interval event contour: in the aftermath of ...; since ...; perfective x1 [force] (ka) forces/compels event x2 to occur; x1 determines property x2 to manifest x1 is big/large in property/dimension(s) x2 as compared with standard/norm x3 x1 is a tavern/bar/pub serving x2 to audience/patrons x3 x1 is on the outside of x2; x1 is exterior to x2 x1 bites/pinches x2 on/at specific locus x3 with x4 exaggeration accuracy understatement bangu modal, 1st place in language ... sumti link to attach sumti (default x2) to a selbri; used in descriptions x1 is foolish/silly in event/action/property [folly] (ka) x2; x1 is a boob vocative: request to send/speak separates multiple linked sumti within a selbri; used in descriptions x1 transfers/sends/transmits x2 to receiver x3 from transmitter/origin x4 via means/medium x5

187

Appendix B. Vocabulary
bi

bilga bilma

bii

8 unordered interval obliged ill become ordered interval beer arm certain white short scope link end number or lerfu bottle ready predicate office brother embarassed coincident with b during today hour walk intense emotion continuative turn rain discuss shove look kill Buddhist

binxo bio

birje birka

bo

blabi

birti

boi botpi bredi

x1 becomes/changes/converts/transforms into x2 under conditions x3 non-logical interval connective: ordered from ... to ... x1 is made of/contains/is a amount of beer/ale/brew brewed from x2 x1 is a/the arm [body-part] of x2 x1 is certain/sure/positive/convinced that x2 is true x1 is white / very light-coloured short scope joiner; joins various constructs with shortest scope and right grouping elidable terminator: terminate numeral or letteral string x1 is a bottle/jar/urn/flask/closable container for x2, made of material x3 with lid x4 x1 is ready/prepared for x2 (event) x1 (text) is a predicate relationship with relation x2 among arguments (sequence/set) x1 is an office/bureau/work-place of worker x2 at location x3 x1 is brother of/fraternal to x2 by bond/tie/standard/parent(s) x3; [not necess. biological] x1 pertains to the Buddhist culture/religion/ethos in aspect x2 x1 is embarrassed/disconcerted/flustered/ill-at-ease about/under conditions x2 (abstraction)

digit/number: 8 non-logical interval connective: unordered between ... and ... x1 is bound/obliged to/has the duty to do/be x2 in/by standard/agreement x3; x1 must do x2 x1 is ill/sick/diseased with symptoms x2 from disease x3

bridi

bruna budjo

briju

burna buu by

ca

carvi

carna

cao

cai

cadzu

cacra

cabdei

casnu catke

catlu

catra

attitudinal: strong intensity attitude modifier interval event contour: during ...; continuative) x1 turns/rotates/revolves around axis x2 in direction x3 x1 rains/showers/[precipitates] to x2 from x3; x1 is precipitation [not limited to rain] x1(s) (mass normally, but 1 individual/jou possible) discuss(es)/talk(s) about topic/subject x2 x1 [agent] shoves/pushes x2 at locus x3 x1 looks at/examines/views/inspects/regards/watches/gazes at x2 [compare with zgani] x1 (agent) kills/slaughters/murders x2 by action/method x3

location tense relation/direction; coincident with/at the same place as; space equivalent of ca letteral for b time tense relation/direction: is [selbri]; during/simultaneous with [sumti]; present tense x1 is today (cabna now + djedi day) x1 is x2 hours in duration (default is 1 hour) by standard x3 x1 walks/strides/paces on surface x2 using limbs x3

188

Appendix B. Vocabulary
ce ceo certu ceu cevni cfari cfipu ci

in a set with in a sequence with expert lambda god initiate confusing 3 food curry kebab hydrogen infant learn kiss emotion interesting sexual paint fancy bird test cheese write smile smile at eat season strange coffee

cidjrkebabi cifnu cilre cinba cidro

cidjrkari

cidja

cinse cinta cinynei

cinri

cinmo

cipra cirla

cipni

ciska cisma

cismyfra citka

citsi

ckafi

cizra

subject x3 (individ./set/mass) x1 is a quantity of/contains cheese/curd from source x2 x1 inscribes/writes x2 on display/storage medium x3 with writing implement x4; x1 is a scribe x1 smiles/grins (facial expression) x1 reacts/responds/answers by smiling to stimulus x2 under conditions x3 [cisma (smile) + frati (react)] x1 eats/ingests/consumes (transitive verb) x2 x1 is a season/is seasonal [cyclical interval], defined by interval/property x2, of year(s) x3 x1 is strange/weird/deviant/bizarre/odd to x2 in property x3 (ka) x1 is made of/contains/is a quantity of coffee from source/bean/grain x2

non-logical connective: set link, unordered; and also, but forming a set non-logical connective: ordered sequence link; and then, forming a sequence x1 is an expert/pro/has prowess in/is skilled at x2 (event/activity) by standard x3 pseudo-quantifier binding a variable within an abstraction that represents an open place x1 is a/the god/deity of people(s)/religion x2 with dominion over x3 [sphere]; x1 is divine x1 [state/event/process] commences/initiates/starts/begins to occur; (intransitive verb) x1 (event/state) confuses/baffles x2 [observer] due to [confusing] property x3 (ka) digit/number: 3 x1 is food/feed/nutriment for x2; x1 is edible/gives nutrition to x2 x1 is a quantity of curry x1 is a kebab x1 is a quantity of/contains/is made of hydrogen (H) x1 is an infant/baby [helpless through youth/incomplete development] of species x2 x1 learns x2 (duu) about subject x3 from source x4 (obj./event) by method x5 (event/process) x1 (agent) kisses/busses x2 at locus x3 x1 feels emotion x2 (ka) about x3 x1 (abstraction) interests/is interesting to x2; x2 is interested in x1 x1 in activity/state x2 exhibits sexuality/gender/sexual orientation x3 (ka) by standard x4 x1 [material] is a paint of pigment/active substance x2, in a base of x3 x1 fancies x2 (cinse sex + nelci like) x1 is a bird/avian/fowl of species x2 x1 (process/event) is a test for/proof of property/state x2 in

189

Appendix B. Vocabulary
ckasu ckire ckule clani cladu

ridicule grateful school long loud early polite leave mathematics small structure word name laugh member moan new beneath initiative unspecified selbri greetings partings cessative request pungent radio front more expert bear

clite cliva

clira

cmalu cmavo cmene cmila

cmaci

cmima cmoni cnino cnita coa

cou cpedu cpina

coo

coi

coe

cradi

crane cremau

cribe

x1 is pungent/piquant/peppery/spicy/irritating to sense x2 x1 broadcasts/transmits [using radio waves] x2 via station/frequency x3 to [radio] receiver x4 x1 is anterior/ahead/forward/(in/on) the front of x2 which faces/in-frame-of-reference x3 x1 is more expert/pro/has prowess than x2 in/is more skilled at x3 by standard x4, by amount/excess x5 (certu expert + zmadu more) x1 is a bear/ursoid of species/breed x2

x1 is loud/noisy at observation point x2 by standard x3 x1 (event) is early by standard x2 x1 is polite/courteous/civil in matter x2 according to standard/custom x3 x1 leaves x2 via route x3 x1 is a mathematics of type/describing x2 x1 is small in property/dimension(s) x2 (ka) as compared with standard/norm x3 x1 is a structure word of grammatical class x2, with meaning/function x3 in usage (language) x4 x1 (quoted word(s)) is a/the name/title/tag of x2 to/used-by namer/name-user x3 (person) x1 laughs x1 is a member/element of set x2; x1 belongs to group x2; x1 is amid/among/amongst group x2 x1 utters moan/groan/howl/scream [non-linguistic utterance] x2 expressing x3 (property) x1 is new/unfamiliar/novel to observer x2 in feature x3 (ka) by standard x4; x1 is a novelty x1 is directly/vertically beneath/below/under/underneath/down from x2 in frame of reference x3 interval event contour: at the starting point of ...; initiative elliptical/unspecified bridi relationship vocative: greetings/hello vocative: partings/good-bye interval event contour: at the ending point of ... even if not done; cessative x1 requests/asks/petitions/solicits for x2 of/from x3 in manner/form x4

x1 ridicules/mocks/scoffs at x2 about x3 (property/event) by doing activity x4 (event) x1 is grateful/thankful to/appreciative of x2 for x3 (event/property) x1 is school/institute/academy at x2 teaching subject(s) x3 to audien./commun. x4 operated by x5 x1 is long in dimension/direction x2 (default longest dimension) by measurement standard x3

190

Appendix B. Vocabulary
crida crino crisa critu

fairy green summer autumn lip teach selbri separator neutral emotion book full produce let express as said by c something #1 conquer supposing empathy answer dance disco curse hell hit 10 something #2 dated wait wear

ctebi ctuca cu cui

cukta culno

cupra

curmi

cuu cy

cusku

da dablea

dai

dai

danfu dansu dansydiu

daptutra darxi dasni

dapma

de

dau

denpa

dei

digit/number: hex digit A logically quantified existential pro-sumti: there exists something #2 (usually restricted) detri modal, 1st place (for letters) dated ... ; attaches date stamp x1 awaits/waits/pauses for/until x2 at state x3 before starting/continuing x4 (activity/process)

elidable marker: separates selbri from preceding sumti, allows preceding terminator elision attitudinal: neutral scalar attitude modifier x1 is a book about subject/theme/story x2 by author x3 for audience x4 preserved in medium x5 x1 is full/completely filled with x2 x1 produces x2 [product] by process x3 x1 (agent) lets/permits/allows x2 (event) under conditions x3; x1 grants privilege x2 x1 expresses/says x2 for audience x3 via expressive medium x4 cusku modal, 1st place (attribution/quotation) as said by source ...; used for quotation letteral for c logically quantified existential pro-sumti: there exists something #1 (usually restricted) x1 conquers/siezes x2 from x3 (war-take) discursive: supposing in fact attitudinal modifier: marks empathetic use of preceding attitudinal; shows anothers feelings x1 is the answer/response/solution/[reply] to question/problem x2 x1 (individual, mass) dances to accompaniment/music/rhythm x2 x1 is a disco (dansu dance + dinju building) x1 curses/damns/condemns x2 to fate (event) x3 x1 is the territory of damnation by x2 (dapma curse + tutra territory) x1 hits/strikes/[beats] x2 with instrument [or body-part] x3 at locus x4 x1 wears/is robed/garbed in x2 as a garment of type x3

x1 is a fairy/elf/gnome/brownie/pixie/goblin/kobold [mythical humanoid] of mythos/religion x2 x1 is green x1 is summer/summertime [hot season] of year x2 at location x3 x1 is autumn/fall [harvest/cooling season] of year x2 at location x3 x1 is a/the lip [body-part]/rim of orifice x2 of body x3; (adjective:) x1 is labial x1 teaches audience x2 ideas/methods/lore x3 (duu) about subject(s) x4 by method x5 (event)

191

Appendix B. Vocabulary
detri di dicra dikca dilnu dinske dirba

date something #3 interrupt electric cloud economics dear water full day want know you vocative marker German drama correct other same identity as too many excess give anguish equal winter bridi abstract d elder 1st sumti place towards point

djacu djedi djica

doi dotco draci drani drata du due

do

djuno

dunda dunku

dukse

dunli

duu dy

dunra

dzena fa

faa

(object/event/process) due to quality x3 x1 is electricity [electric charge or current] in/on x2 of polarity/quantity x3 (def. negative) x1 is a cloud/mass of clouds of material x2 in air mass x3 at floor/base elevation x4 x1 is economics based on methodology x2 (jdini money + saske science) x1 is dear/precious/darling to x2; x1 is emotionally valued by x2 x1 is made of/contains/is a quantity/expanse of water; (adjective:) x1 is aqueous/[aquatic] x1 is x2 full days in duration (default is 1 day) by standard x3; (adjective:) x1 is diurnal x1 desires/wants/wishes x2 (event/state) for purpose x3 x1 knows fact(s) x2 (duu) about subject x3 by epistemology x4 pro-sumti: you listener(s); identified by vocative generic vocative marker; identifies intended listener; elidable after COI x1 reflects German/Germanic culture/nationality/language in aspect x2 x1 is a drama/play about x2 [plot/theme/subject] by dramatist x3 for audience x4 with actors x5 x1 is correct/proper/right/perfect in property/aspect x2 (ka) in situation x3 by standard x4 x1 isnt the-same-thing-as/is different-from/other-than x2 by standard x3; x1 is something else identity selbri; = sign; x1 identically equals x2, x3, etc.; attached sumti refer to same thing digit/number: too many x1 is an excess of/too much of x2 by standard x3 x1 [donor] gives/donates gift/present x2 to recipient/beneficiary x3 [without payment/exchange] x1 is anguished/distressed/emotionally wrought/stressed by x2 x1 is equal/congruent to/as much as x2 in property/dimension/quantity x3 x1 is winter/wintertime [cold season] of year x2 at location abstractor: predication/bridi abstractor; x1 is predication [bridi] expressed in sentence x2 letteral for d x1 is an elder/ancestor of x2 by bond/tie/degree x3; x1s generation precedes x2s parents sumti place tag: tag 1st sumti place location tense relation/direction; arriving at/directly towards ...

x1 is the date [day,{week},{month},year] of event/state x2, at location x3, by calendar x4 logically quantified existential pro-sumti: there exists something #3 (usually restricted) x1 (event) interrupts/stops/halts/[disrupts] x2

192

Appendix B. Vocabulary
facki fagri fai falcru fange

discover fire extra sumti place drop alien translate annoy fall direction event fact and respectively in the event of 2nd sumti place 11 crazy angry crazy over and out 3rd sumti place created by hospitality fish invent fraction slash 4th sumti place it #6 it #7 it #8 telephone it #9 it #10 French

fanva fanza

farna fasnu fatci

farlu

fau fau

fenki feo

fengu

fekpre

fei

fe

fii

fie

fi

finpe finti fiu fo

fonxa foo

foi

foe

foa

fraso

fou

fish aquatic vertebrates] x1 invents/creates/composes/authors x2 for function/purpose x3 from existing elements/ideas x4 digit/number: fraction slash; default /n 1/n, n/ n/1, or / alone golden ratio sumti place tag: tag 4th sumti place pro-sumti: he/she/it/they #6 (specified by goi) pro-sumti: he/she/it/they #7 (specified by goi) pro-sumti: he/she/it/they #8 (specified by goi) x1 is a telephone transceiver/modem attached to system/network x2 pro-sumti: he/she/it/they #9 (specified by goi) pro-sumti: he/she/it/they #10 (specified by goi) x1 reflects French/Gallic culture/nationality/language in aspect x2

vocative: over and out (end discussion) sumti place tag: tag 3rd sumti place finti modal, 1st place (creator) created by ... vocative: hospitality inhospitality; you are welcome/ make yourself at home x1 is a fish of species x2 [metaphorical extension to sharks, non-

x1 discovers/finds out x2 (duu) about subject/object x3; x1 finds (fi) x3 (object) x1 is a fire/flame in fuel x2 burning-in/reacting-with oxidizer x3 (default air/oxygen) sumti place tag: tag a sumti moved out of numbered place structure; used in modal conversions x1 allows x2 to fall/drop to x3 in gravity well/frame of reference x4 x1 is alien/foreign/[exotic]/unfamiliar to x2 in property x3 (ka) x1 translates x2 to language x3 from language x4 with translation-result x5 x1 (event) annoys/irritates/bothers/distracts x2 x1 falls/drops to x2 from x3 in gravity well/frame of reference x4 x1 is the direction of x2 (object/event) from origin/in frame of reference x3 x1 (event) is an event that happens/occurs/takes place; x1 is an incident/happening/occurrence x1 (duu) is a fact/reality/truth/actuality, in the absolute non-logical connective: respectively; unmixed ordered distributed association fasnu modal, 1st place (non-causal) in the event of ... sumti place tag: tag 2nd sumti place digit/number: hex digit B x1 is an insane, crazy person (fenki crazy + prenu person) x1 is angry/mad at x2 for x3 (action/state/property) x1 (action/event) is crazy/insane/mad/frantic/in a frenzy (one sense) by standard x2

193

Appendix B. Vocabulary
frati frumu

react frown 5th sumti place rotten f fore or cover 12 cover modify fore only if closed do fore and fore conn? dog grammar connective medial bridi or bridi and bridi but not bridi conn? bridi iff bridi xor root word bridi whether hot happy copulate English fore iff last bridi pro-sumti assign

fusra fy

fu

gairgau galfi ganai ganlo gasnu ge

gai

gacri

ga

gei gerku

gerna gi gia

gio gionai

gii

gienai

gie

gismu giu

go

glico

gletu

gleki

glare

goi goi

logical connective: bridi-tail afterthought whether-or-not x1 is hot/[warm] by standard x2 x1 is happy/gay/merry/glad/gleeful about x2 (event/state) x1 copulates/mates/has coitus/sexual intercourse with x2 x1 is English/pertains to English-speaking culture in aspect x2 logical connective: forethought all but tanru-internal biconditional/iff/if-and-only-if pro-bridi: preceding bridi; in answer to a yes/no question, repeats the claim, meaning yes sumti assignment; used to define/assign koa/foa series prosumti

logical connective: forethought all but tanru-internal conditional/only if x1 (portal/passage/entrance-way) is closed/shut/not open, preventing passage/access to x2 by x3 x1 [person/agent] is an agentive cause of event x2; x1 does/brings about x2 logical connective: forethought all but tanru-internal and logical connective: forethought all but tanru-internal connective question x1 is a dog/canine/[bitch] of species/breed x2 x1 is the grammar/rules/defining form of language x2 for structure/text x3 logical connective: all but tanru-internal forethought connective medial marker logical connective: bridi-tail afterthought or logical connective: bridi-tail afterthought and logical connective: bridi-tail afterthought x but not y logical connective: bridi-tail afterthought connective question logical connective: bridi-tail afterthought biconditional/iff/ifand-only-if logical connective: bridi-tail afterthought exclusive or x1 is a (Lojban) root word expressing relation x2 among argument roles x3, with affix(es)

rotten/decayed/fermented letteral for f logical connective: forethought all but tanru-internal or x1 is a cover/[lid/top] for covering/concealing/sheltering x2 digit/number: hex digit C x1 [person/agent] places x2 as a cover/[lid/top] on x3 (gacri cover + gasnu do) x1 (event) modifies/alters/changes/transforms/converts x2 into x3

x1 reacts/responds/answers with action x2 to stimulus x3 under conditions x4; x1 is responsive x1 frowns/grimaces (facial expression) sumti place tag: tag 5th sumti place x1 rots/decays/ferments with decay/fermentation agent x2; x1 is

194

Appendix B. Vocabulary
gonai grana

fore xor rod fore whether fore or fore only if public fore and country fore conn? desk work roll attack Communism fore iff fore xor illumine restaurant fore whether g tanru or modal conversion result foot war shoulder suburb show

gu

guanai gubni gue

gua

gugde gui gunjubme

gunka gunro gunta

guntrusio guo guonai gusni gusta guu gy

jai jalge jamfu

ja

jamna janco jarbu

jarco

is a roller x1 (person/mass) attacks/invades/commits aggression upon victim x2 with goal/objective x3 x1 is a notion of communism (gunka work + turni govern + sidbo idea) logical connective: forethought all but tanru-internal biconditional/iff/if-and-only-if logical connective: forethought all but tanru-internal exclusive or x1 [energy] is light/illumination illuminating x2 from light source x3 x1 is a restaurant/cafe/diner serving type-of-food x2 to audience x3 logical connective: forethought all but tanru-internal whetheror-not letteral for g logical connective: tanru-internal or convert tense/modal (tagged) place to 1st place; 1st place moves to extra FA place (fai) x1 (action/event/state) is a result/outcome/conclusion of antecedent x2 (event/state/process) x1 is a/the foot [body-part] of x2 x1 (person/mass) wars against x2 over territory/matter x3; x1 is at war with x2 x1 is a/the shoulder/hip/joint [body-part] attaching limb/extremity x2 to body x3 x1 is a suburban area of city/metropolis x2 x1 (agent) shows/exhibits/displays/[reveals]/demonstrates x2 (property) to audience x3

logical connective: forethought all but tanru-internal and x1 is the country of peoples x2 with land/territory x3; (people/territory relationship) logical connective: forethought all but tanru-internal connective question x1 is a desk of worker x2 (gunka work + jubme table) x1 [person] labors/works on/at x2 [activity] with goal/objective x3 x1 rolls/trundles on/against surface x2 rotating on axis/axle x3; x1

logical connective: forethought all but tanru-internal whetheror-not logical connective: forethought all but tanru-internal or logical connective: forethought all but tanru-internal conditional/only if x1 is public/un-hidden/open/jointly available to/owned by all among community x2 (mass)

logical connective: forethought all but tanru-internal exclusive or x1 is a rod/pole/staff/stick/cane [shape/form] of material x2

195

Appendix B. Vocabulary
jatna jau

captain 13 born Logfest price money tanru and polity revolutionary roger tanru conn? burn gem tanru but not grasp pride guitar guitar violin sumti conn? in addition socialize understand opine chicken juice add live

jbena jbonunsalci jdima jdini je

jecta jecygaibai jee jei

jelca jemna jenai

jgari

jgita

jgira

jikca jimpe jinvi jipci jisra jmina jmive

jia

ji

jgitrviolino

jgitrgitara

amount x3 x1 lives/is alive by standard x2; x1 is an organism/living thing

x1 (person) feels/has pride in/about x2 (abstraction) x1 is a guitar/violin/fiddle/harp [stringed musical instrument] with actuator/plectrum/bow x2 x1 is a guitar x1 is a violin logical connective: sumti afterthought connective question discursive: additionally x1 interacts/behaves socially with x2; x1 socializes with/is sociable towards x2 x1 understands/comprehends fact/truth x2 (duu) about subject x3; x1 understands (fi) x3 x1 thinks/opines x2 [opinion] (duu) is true about subject/issue x3 on grounds x4 x1 is a chicken/[hen/cock/rooster]/small fowl [a type of bird] of species/breed x2 x1 is made of/contains/is a quantity of juice/nectar fromsource/of-type x2 x1 adds/combines x2 to/with x3, with result x4; x1 augments x2 by

modify + bapli force) vocative: roger (ack) negative acknowledge; used to acknowledge offers and thanks logical connective: tanru-internal connective question x1 burns/[ignites/is flammable/inflammable] at temperature x2 in atmosphere x3 x1 is a gem/polished stone/pearl of type x2 from gemstone/material/source x3 logical connective: tanru-internal x but not y x1 grasps/holds/clutches/seizes/grips/[hugs] x2 with x3 (part of x1) at locus x4 (part of x2)

x1 is captain/commander/leader/in-charge/boss of vehicle/domain x2 digit/number: hex digit D x1 is born to x2 at time x3 [birthday] and place x4 [birthplace]; x1 is native to (fo) x1 is an event of celebrating/recognizing/honoring Lojban with activity/[party] x2 x1 [amount] is the price of x2 to purchaser/consumer x3 set by vendor x4 x1 is money/currency issued by x2; (adjective:) x1 is financial/monetary/pecuniary/fiscal logical connective: tanru-internal and x1 is a polity/state governing territory/domain x2; [government/territory relationship] x1 revolts against/deposes regime x2 (jecta polity + galfi

196

Appendix B. Vocabulary
jo joi jonai

tanru iff in a mass with tanru xor tanru whether table attention cook attentive Chinese serious certainty property abstract cup able cup with compare car journal indirect question start grouping relativized it end grouping end abstraction outer space please repeat hair textual confusion thanks oxygen number comma

jubme jui

ju

jukpa jundi jungo junri juo

ka

kabri kakne kanla kansa karbi karce karni kau

ke

kee kei

kea

keo kia

kensa

kerfa

kio

kijno

kie

x1 is able to do/be/capable of doing/being x2 (event/state) under conditions x3 (event/state) x1 is a/the eye [body-part] of x2; [metaphor: sensory apparatus]; (adjective:) x1 is ocular x1 is with/accompanies/is a companion of x2, in state/condition/enterprise x3 (event/state) x1 [observer] compares x2 with x3 in property x4 (ka), determining comparison x5 (state) x1 is a car/automobile/truck/van [a wheeled motor vehicle] for carrying x2, propelled by x3 x1 is a journal/periodical/magazine/[newspaper] with content x2 published by x3 for audience x4 discursive: marks word serving as focus of indirect question start grouping of tanru, etc; ... type of ... ; overrides normal tanru left grouping pro-sumti: relativized sumti (object of relative clause) elidable terminator: end of tanru left grouping override (usually elidable) elidable terminator: end abstraction bridi (often elidable) x1 is outer space near/associated with celestial body/region x2 vocative: please repeat x1 is a/the hair/fur [body-part] of x2 at body location x3 attitudinal question: confusion about something said vocative: thanks no thanks to you x1 is a quantity of/contains/is made of oxygen (O) digit/number: number comma; thousands

(process) x1 is attentive towards/attends/tends/pays attention to object/affair x2 x1 reflects Chinese [Mandarin, Cantonese, Wu, etc.] culture/nationality/language in aspect x2 x1 (person) is serious/earnest/has gravity about x2 (event/state/activity) attitudinal modifier: certainly uncertain certainly not abstractor: property/quality abstractor (-ness); x1 is quality/property exhibited by [bridi] x1 is a cup/glass/tumbler/mug/vessel/[bowl] containing contents x2, and of material x3

logical connective: tanru-internal biconditional/iff/if-and-onlyif non-logical connective: mixed conjunction; and meaning mixed together, forming a mass logical connective: tanru-internal exclusive or logical connective: tanru-internal whether-or-not x1 is a table/flat solid upper surface of material x2, supported by legs/base/pedestal x3 vocative: attention at ease ignore me x1 cooks/prepares food-for-eating x2 by recipe/method x3

197

Appendix B. Vocabulary
kisto kiu klaji klaku

Pakistani because of reason street weep come imperative it #1 it #2 it #3 it #4 it #5 origin senator reason cry out end sumti curious however delicious room empty end relative clause take care of k q that named probability pull milk last utterance it the referent of the set of named the mass of named

krasi kratrsenatore

kou

koo

koi

koe

koa

ko

klama

krinu krixa

ku

kucli kui

kukte kumfa kunti

kuo

kurji ky

la

kybu

ladru

lacpu

laa

lae lai lai

lae diu

x1 is made of/contains/is a quantity of milk from source x2; (adjective:) x1 is lactic/dairy pro-sumti: the referent of the last utterance; the state described the referent of (indirect pointer); uses the referent of a sumti as the desired sumti name descriptor: the set of those named ... ; takes name or selbri description name descriptor: the mass of individual(s) named ... ; takes name or selbri description

for x2 (object/event/person) letteral for k letteral for q name descriptor: the one(s) called ... ; takes name or selbri description discursive: probably improbably x1 pulls/tugs/draws/drags x2 by handle/at locus x3

x2 accessing x3 x1 weeps/cries tears x2 about/for reason x3 (event/state) x1 goes/comes to x2 from x3 via x4 by means x5 pro-sumti: you (imperative); make it true for you, the listener pro-sumti: he/she/it/they #1 (specified by goi) pro-sumti: he/she/it/they #2 (specified by goi) pro-sumti: he/she/it/they #3 (specified by goi) pro-sumti: he/she/it/they #4 (specified by goi) pro-sumti: he/she/it/they #5 (specified by goi) x1 (site/event) is a source/start/beginning/origin of x2 (object/event/process) x1 is a senator representing x2 in senate x3 x1 (event/state) is a reason/justification/explanation for/causing/permitting x2 (event/state) x1 cries out/yells/howls sound x2; x1 is a crier elidable terminator: end description, modal, or negator sumti; often elidable x1 is curious/wonders about/is interested in/[inquisitive about] x2 (object/abstract) iscursive: however/but/in contrast x1 is delicious/tasty/delightful to observer/sense x2 [person, or sensory activity] x1 is a room of/in structure x2 surrounded by partitions/walls/ceiling/floor x3 (mass/jou) x1 [container] is empty/vacant of x2 [material]; x1 is hollow elidable terminator: end NOI relative clause; always elidable, but preferred in complex clauses x1 takes-care-of/looks after/attends to/provides for/is caretaker

x1 reflects Pakistani/Pashto culture/nationality/language in aspect x2 krinu modal, 1st place (justified by) justifiably; because of reason ... x1 is a street/avenue/lane/drive/cul-de-sac/way/alley/[road] at

198

Appendix B. Vocabulary
lamji lanli lanme

adjacent analyze sheep can the non-Lojban named the described take the stereotypical the set described the mass described late end error quote the number precede experience lightning that which really is the typical logic the set which really is the mass which really is Lojbanic end mex sumti error quote the individuals of affix compound lunar

lante lao le

lebna lee

lei lei

li

leu

lerci

lidne lifri lindi lo

logji loi loi lojbo loo lou lua lujvo lunra

loe

former/preceding/previous; x2 is latter/following x1 [person/passive/state] undergoes/experiences x2 (event/experience); x2 happens to x1 x1 is lightning/electrical arc/thunderbolt striking at/extending to x2 from x3 veridical descriptor: the one(s) that really is(are) ... veridical descriptor: the typical one(s) who really is(are) ... x1 [rules/methods] is a logic for deducing/concluding/inferring/reasoning to/about x2 (duu) veridical descriptor: the set of those that really are ..., treated as a set veridical descriptor: the mass of individual(s) that is(are) ... x1 reflects [Loglandic]/Lojbanic language/culture/nationality/community in aspect x2 elidable terminator: end math expression (mex) sumti; end mex-to-sumti conversion; usually elidable start questionable/out-of-context quote; text should be Lojban words, but neednt be grammatical the members of the set/components of the mass; converts another description type to individuals x1 (text) is a compound predicate word with meaning x2 and arguments x3 built from metaphor x4 x1 is Earths moon (default); x1 is a major natural satellite/moon of planet x2

x1 is adjacent/beside/next to/in contact with x2 in property/sequence x3 in direction x4 x1 analyzes/examines-in-detail x2 by method/technique/system x3 [process/activity] x1 is a sheep/[lamb/ewe/ram] of species/breed x2 of flock x3 x1 is a can/tightly sealed/pre-sealed container for perishable contents x2, made of x3 delimited non-Lojban name; the resulting quote sumti is treated as a name non-veridical descriptor: the one(s) described as ... x1 takes/gets/gains/obtains/seizes/[removes] x2 (object/property) from x3 (possessor) non-veridical descriptor: the stereotype of those described as ... non-veridical descriptor: the set of those described as ..., treated as a set non-veridical descriptor: the mass of individual(s) described as ... x1 (event) is late by standard x2 end quote of questionable or out-of-context text; not elidable the number/evaluated expression; convert number/operand/evaluated math expression to sumti x1 precedes/leads x2 in sequence x3; x1 is

199

Appendix B. Vocabulary
luo ly

ma maa mabla malglico

the mass composed of l sumti? we with you derogative derogatorily English derogatorily natural language mother wonder dark satisfy month flokati rug exceeded by sumti to selbri brow beautiful mind sister American me we, not you self-introduction doctor mild reflect

malrarbau mamta manci

masti

mansa

manku

mau me

matcrflokati

mebri melbi menli mensi merko mi mia mie mikce milxe minra

ailment x3 by treatment/cure x4 x1 is mild/non-extreme/gentle/middling/somewhat in property x2 (ka); x1 is not very x2 x1 reflects/mirrors/echoes x2 [object/radiation] to observer/point x3 as x4; x2 bounces on x1

pro-sumti: me/we the speaker(s)/author(s); identified by selfvocative pro-sumti: me/we the speaker(s)/author(s) and others unspecified, but not you, the listener self vocative: self-introduction denial of identity; identifies speaker x1 doctors/treats/nurses/[cures]/is physician/midwife to x2 for

zmadu modal, 1st place (a greater) exceeded by ... ; usually a sumti modifier convert sumti to selbri/tanru element; x1 is specific to [sumti] in aspect x2 x1 is a/the brow/forehead [projecting flat/smooth head/bodypart] of x2 x1 is beautiful/pleasant to x2 in aspect x3 (ka) by aesthetic standard x4 x1 is a mind/intellect/psyche/mentality/[consciousness] of body x2 x1 is a sister of/sororal to x2 by bond/tie/standard/parent(s) x3; [not necessarily biological] x1 pertains to USA/American culture/nationality/dialect in aspect x2

English) x1 is a natural language, and is derogatorily viewed by x2 (mabla derogative + rarna natural + bangu languge) x1 is a mother of x2; x1 bears/mothers/acts maternally toward x2; [not necessarily biological] x1 feels wonder/awe/marvels about x2 x1 is dark/lacking in illumination x1 satisfies evaluator x2 in property (ka)/state x3 x1 is x2 months in duration (default is 1 month) by month standard x3 x1 is a flokati rug

the mass composed of; converts another description type to a mass composed of the members letteral for l pro-sumti: sumti question (what/who/how/why/etc.); appropriately fill in sumti blank pro-sumti: me/we the speaker(s)/author(s) and you the listener(s) and others unspecified x1 is a derogative connotation/sense of x2 used by x3; x3 derogates/curses at x2 in form x1 x1 is English/pertains to English-speaking culture in aspect x2, and is derogatorily viewed by x3 (mabla derogative + glico

200

Appendix B. Vocabulary
mintu mio misno mlatu mo

same me and you famous cat bridi? space motion ordinal selbri remember dead mail die 5 because of motive motive complete universe over example much exemplified by m sumti only if bridi negator problem scalar contrary bridi only if negate last word tanru only if number completive

moi

moi

morji morsi mou

mrilu mrobio

mukti mulno munje muo

mui

mu

mupli mutce muu

na

na.a

my

nabmi nae nagia

nai

namcu

naja

vocative: over (response OK) more to come x1 is an example/sample/specimen/instance/case/illustration of common property(s) x2 of set x3 x1 is much/extreme in property x2 (ka), towards x3 extreme/direction; x1 is, in x2, very x3 mupli modal, 1st place exemplified by ... letteral for m logical connective: sumti afterthought conditional/only if bridi contradictory negator; scope is an entire bridi; logically negates in some cmavo compounds x1 (event/state) is a problem to/encountered by x2 in situation/task/inquiry x3 contrary scalar negator: other than ...; not ...; a scale or set is implied logical connective: bridi-tail afterthought conditional/only if attached to cmavo to negate them; various negation-related meanings logical connective: tanru-internal conditional/only if x1 (li) is a number/quantifier/digit/value/figure (noun); refers to the value and not the symbol

interval event contour: at the natural ending point of ...; completive x1 mails/posts [transfer via intermediary service] x2 to x3 from x4 by carrier/network/system x5 x1 dies under conditions x2 (morsi dead + binxo become) digit/number: 5 mukti modal, 1st place because of motive ... x1 (action/event/state) motivates/is a motive/incentive for action/event x2, per volition of x3 x1 (event) is complete/done/finished; x1 (object) has become whole in property x2 by standard x3 x1 is a universe/cosmos [complete and ordered entirety] of domain/sphere x2 defined by rules x3

x1 is the same/identical thing as x2 by standard x3; (x1 and x2 interchangeable) pro-sumti: me/we the speaker(s)/author(s) and you the listener(s) x1 (person/object/event) is famous/renowned/is a celebrity among community of persons x2 (mass) x1 is a cat/[puss/pussy/kitten] [feline animal] of species/breed x2; (adjective:) x1 is feline pro-bridi: bridi/selbri/brivla question mark motions in space-time convert number to ordinal selbri; x1 is (n)th member of set x2 ordered by rule x3 x1 remembers/recalls/recollects fact(s)/memory x2 (duu) about subject x3 x1 is dead/has ceased to be alive

201

Appendix B. Vocabulary
nanba nanca nandu nanmu narju

bread year difficult man orange next to within fond in amount abstract below necessitate night because of logic citrus woman meet new topic need negative number 0 noble scalar midpoint not incidental clause incidental identity event abstract promise promise n 1

nenri ni nia

nelci

nei

nea

nibli nicte nii

ninmu ninpei nio

nimre

nitcu niu no

nobli noe noi nou nu nue

nupre ny

pa

purpose/action/stage of process x3 digit/number: minus sign; negative number); default any negative digit/number: 0 x1 is noble/aristocratic/elite/high-born/titled in/under culture/society/standard x2 midpoint scalar negator: neutral point between jea and toe; not really non-restrictive relative clause; attaches subordinate bridi with incidental information non-restrictive appositive phrase marker: which incidentally is the same thing as ... abstractor: generalized event abstractor; x1 is state/process/achievement/activity of [bridi] vocative: promise promise release un-promise x1 (agent) promises/commits/assures/threatens x2 (event/state) to x3 [beneficiary/victim] letteral for n digit/number: 1

night/nocturnal nibli modal, 1st place logically; logically because ... x1 is a quantity of citrus [fruit/tree, etc.] of species/strain x2 x1 is a woman (any female humanoid person, not necessarily adult) x1 meets x2 for the first time at location x3 (cnino new + penmi meet) discursive: paragraph break; introduce new topic x1 needs/requires/is dependent on/[wants] necessity x2 for

x1 is a quantity of/contains bread [leavened or unleavened] made from grains x2 x1 is x2 years in duration (default is 1 year) by standard x3; (adjective:) x1 is annual x1 is difficult/hard/challenging for x2 under conditions x3; x1 challenges (non-agentive) x2 x1 is a man/men; x1 is a male humanoid person [not necessarily adult] x1 is orange [color adjective] location tense relation/direction; approximating/next to ... location tense relation/direction; within/inside of/into ... x1 is fond of/likes/has a taste for x2 (object/state) x1 is in/inside/within x2; x1 is on the inside/interior of x2 [totally within the bounds of x2] abstractor: quantity/amount abstractor; x1 is quantity/amount of [bridi] measured on scale x2 location tense relation/direction; downwards/down from ... x1 logically necessitates/entails/implies action/event/state x2 under rules/logic system x3 x1 is a nighttime of day x2 at location x3; (adjective:) x1 is at

202

Appendix B. Vocabulary
pagbu pai

part pi evil potato

pe

pavbudjo

patlu

palci

first Buddhist restrictive phrase I opine emotion? touch yellow

pei

pei

pencu pendo

pelxu

pensi

penmi

friend meet police paste please most of decimal point digit separator use pencil drink used by piano apple complicated is specific to which belongs to restrictive clause possess restrictive identity

pesxu peu

pi soe pi

pie pilno pinsi pinxe pio

pipno plise

pluja po poe poi ponse pou

x1 is complex/complicated/involved in aspect/property x2 (ka) by standard x3 restrictive relative phrase marker: which is specific to ...; normal possessive physical/legal restrictive relative phrase marker: which belongs to ... ; inalienable possession restrictive relative clause; attaches subordinate bridi with identifying information to a sumti x1 possesses/owns/has x2 under law/custom x3; x1 is owner/proprietor of x2 under x3 restrictive appositive phrase marker: which is the same thing as

x1 meets/encounters x2 at/in location x3 x1 thinks/considers/cogitates/reasons/is pensive about/reflects upon subject/concept x2 x1 is paste/pulp/dough/mash/mud/slurry [soft, smoothtextured, moist solid] of composition x2 vocative: please number: most of of; used to refer to a greater portion of something digit/number: radix (number base) point; default decimal digit/number:separates digits for base >16, not current standard, or variable (e.g. time, date) x1 uses/employs x2 [tool, apparatus, machine, agent, acting entity, material] for purpose x3 x1 is a pencil/crayon/stylus applying lead/marking material x2, frame/support [of material] x3 x1 (agent) drinks/imbibes beverage/drink/liquid refreshment x2 from/out-of container/source x3 pilno modal, 1st place used by ... x1 is a piano/harpsichord/synthesizer/organ; a keyboard musical instrument x1 is an apple [fruit] of species/strain x2

restrictive relative phrase marker: which is associated with ...; loosest associative/possessive evidential: I opine (subjective claim) attitudinal: attitudinal question; how do you feel about it? with what intensity? x1 is yellow/golden [color adjective] x1 (agent) touches x2 with x3 [a locus on x1 or an instrument] at x4 [a locus on x2] x1 is/acts as a friend of/to x2 (experiencer); x2 befriends x1

x1 is a part/component/piece/portion/segment of x2 [where x2 is a whole/mass]; x2 is partly x1 digit/number: pi (approximately 3.1416...) x1 is evil/depraved/wicked [morally bad] by standard x2 x1 is a potato [an edible tuber] of variety/cultivar x2 x1 is the first Buddhist (pa 1 + budjo Buddhist)

203

Appendix B. Vocabulary
prami prenu preti pritu

love person question right before police anticipative past last night p recent sumti rabbit affix natural fry 2 meat ready to receive 14 human last sumti because of cause cause greet parent on the right of each rock earlier sumti weak emotion

pu

pulji puo

purci purlamcte py

ra

rafsi

ractu

rarna rasyjukpa

remna ri ria

rei

rei

rectu

re

rinka rinsa rirni riu

rokci ru rue

ro

pro-sumti: a remote past sumti, before all other in-use backcounting sumti attitudinal: weak intensity attitude modifier

digit/number: 2 x1 is a quantity of/contains meat/flesh from source/animal x2 vocative: ready to receive not ready to receive digit/number: hex digit E x1 is a human/human being/man (non-specific gender-free sense); (adjective:) x1 is human pro-sumti: the last sumti, as determined by back-counting rules rinka modal, 1st place (phys./mental) causal because ... x1 (event/state) effects/physically causes effect x2 (event/state) under conditions x3 x1 (agent) greets/hails/[welcomes/says hello to]/responds to arrival of x2 in manner x3 (action) x1 is a parent of/raises/rears x2; x1 mentors/acts parental toward child/protege x2 location tense relation/direction; rightwards/to the right of ... digit/number: each, all x1 is a quantity of/is made of/contains rock/stone of type/composition x2 from location x3

night) letteral for p pro-sumti: a recent sumti before the last one, as determined by back-counting rules x1 is a rabbit/hare/[doe] of species/breed x2 x1 is an affix/suffix/prefix/combining-form for word/concept x2, form/properties x3, language x4 x1 is natural/spontaneous/instinctive, not [consciously] caused by person(s) x1 fries x2 (grasu grease + jukpa cook)

questioner x3 to audience x4 x1 is to the right of x2 facing x3 time tense relation/direction: did [selbri]; before/prior to [sumti]; default past tense x1 is a police officer/[enforcer/vigilante] enforcing law(s)/rule(s)/order x2 interval event contour: in anticipation of ...; until ... ; inchoative x1 is in the past of/earlier than/before x2 in time sequence; x1 is former; x2 is latter x1 is the night preceding x2 (purci past + lamji adjacent + nicte

x1 loves/feels strong affectionate devotion towards x2 (object/state) x1 is a person/people (noun) [not necessarily human]; x1 displays personality/a persona x1 (quoted text) is a question/query about subject x2 by

204

Appendix B. Vocabulary
rufsu rupnu ry

rough dollar r erase utterance provide precisely speaking strong emotion sugar celebrate sing stand meal science operate instead of without sentence abstract results because as a part of assisting 2nd conversion self-oriented predicate relation manifesto apart erase word idea help seem

sa sabji sae

sakta salci sanga sanli sanmi

sai

saske sazri

se duu se jae

se cau

se bai

se siu se

se pau

selbri selpeicku sepli si sidbo sidju simlu

sei

arguments (sequence/set) (= se bridi) x1 is a manifesto about topic x2 by author x3 for audience x4 preserved in medium x5 (pensi thought + cukta book) x1 is apart/separate from x2, separated by partition/wall/gap/interval/separating medium x3 erase the last Lojban word, treating non-Lojban text as a single word x1 [person] labors/works on/at x2 [activity] with goal/objective x3 x1 helps/assists/aids object/person x2 do/achieve/maintain event/activity x3 x1 seems/appears to have property(ies) x2 to observer x3 under conditions x4

x1 sings/chants x2 [song/hymn/melody/melodic sounds] to audience x3 x1 stands [is vertically oriented] on surface x2 supported by limbs/support/pedestal x3 x1 (mass) is a meal composed of dishes including x2 x1 (mass of facts) is science of/about subject matter x2 based on methodology x3 x1 operates/drives/runs x2 [apparatus/machine] with goal/objective/use/end/function x3 basti modal, 2nd place instead of ... claxu modal, 2nd place (lacking) without ... compound abstractor: sentence/equation abstract; x1 is text expressing [bridi] which is x2 jalge modal, 2nd place (event causal) results because of ... pagbu modal, 2nd place (whole) partially; as a part of ... sidju modal, 2nd place assisting ... (in doing/maintaining something) 2nd conversion; switch 1st/2nd places attitudinal modifier: self-oriented other-oriented x2 (text) is a predicate relationship with relation x1 among

x1 is rough/coarse/uneven/[grainy/scabrous/rugged] in texture/regularity x1 is measured in major-money-units (dollar/yuan/ruble) as x2 (quantity), monetary system x3 letteral for r erase complete or partial utterance; next word shows how much erasing to do x1 (source) provides/supplies/furnishes x2 [supply/commodity] to x3 [recipient] discursive: precisely speaking loosely speaking attitudinal: moderate intensity attitude modifier x1 is made of/contains/is a quantity of sugar [sweet edible] from source x2 of composition x3 x1 celebrates/recognizes/honors x2 (event/abstract) with activity/[party] x3

205

Appendix B. Vocabulary
simsa simxu sio

similar mutual seek concept

sisku sisti skapi

cease pelt describe cord familiar onion quieten quiet south accidental 9 almost all soda most many reciprocal sumti soldier several few surprise plant marry married hospital

skicu skori

slabu sluni

smagau smaji snanu snuti so

sodva soe

soa

soi

soi

spaji spati

sou

soo

sonci

spebio

speni spita

x1 is married to x2; x1 is a spouse of x2 under law/custom/tradition/system/convention x3 x1 is a hospital treating patient(s) x2 for condition/injuries/disease/illness x3

binxo become)

is an accident digit/number: 9 digit/number: almost all (digit/number) x1 is made of/contains/is a quantity of a carbonated beverage/soda of flavor/brand x2 digit/number: most digit/number: many discursive: reciprocal sumti marker; indicates a reciprocal relationship between sumti x1 is a soldier/warrior/fighter of army x2 digit/number: several digit/number: few x1 (event/action abstract) surprises/startles/is unexpected [and generally sudden] to x2 x1 is a plant/herb/greenery of species/strain/cultivar x2 x1 marries x2; x1 becomes a spouse of x2 under law/custom/tradition/system/convention x3 (speni spouse +

specification of set) x1 ceases/stops/halts activity/process/state x2 [not necessarily completing it] x1 is a pelt/skin/hide/leather from x2 x1 tells about/describes x2 (object/event/state) to audience x3 with description x4 (property) x1 is cord/cable/rope/line/twine/cordage/woven strands of material x2 x1 is old/familiar/well-known to observer x2 in feature x3 (ka) by standard x4 x1 is a quantity of/contains onions/scallions of type/cultivar x2 x1 acts so that x2 is quiet/silent/[still] at observation point x3 by standard x4 (smaji quiet + gasnu do) x1 (source) is quiet/silent/[still] at observation point x2 by standard x3 x1 is to the south/southern side of x2 according to frame of reference x3 x1 (event/state) is an accident/unintentional on the part of x2; x1

x1 is similar/parallel to x2 in property/quantity x3 (ka/ni); x1 looks/appears like x2 x1 (set) has members who mutually/reciprocally x2 (event [x1 should be reflexive in 1+ sumti]) abstractor: idea/concept abstractor; x1 is x2s concept of [bridi] x1 seeks/searches/looks for property x2 among set x3 (complete

206

Appendix B. Vocabulary
spoja spuda sruma

explode reply reply remain head lock at most plus argument at least fast unspecified abstract

stela sue

stedu

stali

sui

sumti suo

sutra suu sy

ta taa

s that there

tadni tamne tao

interruption study cousin by the way star star label behave talk city try hard deceive talk time of day label as a name used by

tartcita tarti tavla

tarci

tcadu tcetoi tcica

tcidu tcika tcita

te mee

(event/state) x1 [agent] reads x2 [text] from surface/document/reading material x3; x1 is a reader x1 [hours, {minutes}, {seconds}] is the time/hour of state/event x2 on day x3 at location x4 x1 is a label/tag of x2 showing information x3 cmene modal, 3rd place as a name used by ...

member, default same generation] discursive: by the way returning to the subject x1 is a star/sun with stellar properties x2 x1 is a star-shaped label/tag of x2 showing information x3 (tarci star + tcita label) x1 behaves/conducts oneself as/in-manner x2 (event/property) under conditions x3 x1 talks/speaks to x2 about subject x3 in language x4 x1 is a town/city of metropolitan area x2, in political unit x3, serving hinterland/region x4 x1 tries hard to do/attain x2 (event/state/property) by actions/method x3 (mutce much + troci try) x1 (event/experience) misleads/deceives/dupes/fools/cheats/tricks x2 into x3

letteral for s pro-sumti: that there; nearby demonstrative it; indicated thing/place near listener vocative: interruption x1 studies/is a student of x2; x1 is a scholar; (adjective:) x1 is scholarly x1 is cousin to x2 by bond/tie x3; [non-immediate family

digit/number: at most (all); no more than n-ary mathematical operator: plus; addition operator; [(((a + b) + c) + ...)] x1 is a/the argument of predicate/function x2 filling place x3 (kind/number) at least some); no less than x1 is fast/swift/quick/hastes/rapid at doing/being/bringing about x2 (event/state) abstractor: generalized abstractor (how); x1 is [bridi] as a nonspecific abstraction of type x2

x1 bursts/explodes/violently breaks up/decomposes/combusts into pieces/energy/fragments x2 x1 answers/replies to/responds to person/object/event/situation/stimulus x2 with response x3 x1 assumes/supposes that x2 (duu) is true about subject x3 x1 remains/stays at/abides/lasts with x2 x1 is a/the head [body-part] of x2 x1 is a lock/seal of/on/for sealing x2 with/by locking mechanism x3

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Appendix B. Vocabulary
te

telgau terdi ti tia

3rd conversion lock earth this here behind perform obey hear iron associated with time television start parenthesis polar opposite end parenthesis away from point superlative train try that yonder the bridi implied by start text scope agree govern territory end text scope t there at 15

tinbe tirna tirse

tigni

tiu

tivni to toe

toi

too traji trene troci tu tua tue tugni turni tutra

tuu ty

va vai

x3 x1 is territory/domain/space of/belonging to/controlled by x2 elidable terminator: end multiple utterance scope; seldom elidable letteral for t location tense distance: near to ... ; there at ...; a medium/small distance from ... digit/number: hex digit F

3rd conversion; switch 1st/2nd places x1 (agent) makes x2 be a lock/seal of/on/for sealing x3 with/by locking mechanism x4 (stela lock + gasnu do) x1 is the Earth/the home planet of race x2; (adjective:) x1 is terrestrial/earthbound pro-sumti: this here; immediate demonstrative it; indicated thing/place near speaker location tense relation/direction; rearwards/to the rear of ... x1 performs x2 [performance] for/before audience x3 x1 obeys/follows the command/rule x2 made by x3; (adjective:) x1 is obedient x1 hears x2 against background/noise x3; x2 is audible; (adjective:) x1 is aural x1 is a quantity of/contains/is made of iron (Fe) tcika modal, 1st place (for letters) associated with time ... ; attach time stamp x1 [broadcaster] televises programming x2 via media/channel x3 to television receiver x4 left parenthesis; start of parenthetical note which must be grammatical Lojban text polar opposite scalar negator elidable terminator: right parenthesis/end unquote; seldom elidable except at end of text location tense relation/direction; departing from/directly away from ... x1 is superlative in property x2 (ka), the x3 extreme (ka; default ka zmadu) among set/range x4 x1 is a train [vehicle] of cars/units x2 (mass) for rails/system/railroad x3, propelled by x4 x1 tries/attempts/makes an effort to do/attain x2 (event/state/property) by actions/method x3 pro-sumti: that yonder; distant demonstrative it; indicated thing far from speaker and listener extracts a concrete sumti from an unspecified abstraction; equivalent to le nu/suu [sumti] coe start of multiple utterance scope; used for logical/nonlogical/ordinal joining of sentences x1 [person] agrees with person(s)/position/side x2 that x3 (duu) is true about matter x4 x1 [person] labors/works on/at x2 [activity] with goal/objective

208

Appendix B. Vocabulary
vajni valsi vanbi vanju

important word environment wine under conditions end simple bridi 4th conversion sell revenge spring here at toilet excrete remove airplane wilco see guest powerful 4 x1 it x2 it fly x3 it voice x4 it x5 it virtue yonder at v w 6

vao vau ve

vecnu venfu vensa vi viirkua

vimcu vinji vio

vikmi

vlipa vo

vitke

viska

vrude vu vy

vou

voo

voksa

voi

vofli

voe

voa

xa

vybu

x1 has the power to bring about x2 under conditions x3; x1 is powerful in aspect x2 under x3 digit/number: 4 pro-sumti: repeats 1st place of main bridi of this sentence pro-sumti: repeats 2nd place of main bridi of this sentence x1 flies [in air/atmosphere] using lifting/propulsion means x2 pro-sumti: repeats 3rd place of main bridi of this sentence x1 is a voice/speech sound of individual x2 pro-sumti: repeats 4th place of main bridi of this sentence pro-sumti: repeats 5th place of main bridi of this sentence x1 is virtuous/saintly/[fine/moral/nice/holy/morally good] by standard x2 location tense distance: far from ... ; yonder at ... ; a long distance from ... letteral for v letteral for w digit/numeral: 6

(nu) with vengeance x4 (nu) x1 is spring/springtime [warming season] of year x2 at location x3; (adjective:) x1 is vernal location tense distance: here at ... ; at or a very short/tiny distance from ... x1 is a toilet in structure x2 (vikmi excrete + kumfa room) x1 [body] excretes waste x2 from source x3 via means/route x4 x1 removes/subtracts/deducts/takes away x2 from x3 with/leaving result/remnant/remainder x4 x1 is an airplane/aircraft [flying vehicle] for carrying passengers/cargo x2, propelled by x3 vocative: wilco (ack and will comply) x1 sees/views/perceives visually x2 under conditions x3 x1 is a guest/visitor of x2 at place/event x3; x1 visits x2/x3

vanbi modal, 1st place (conditions 1) under conditions ...; in environment ... elidable: end of sumti in simple bridi; in compound bridi, separates common trailing sumti 4th conversion; switch 1st/4th places x1 [seller] sells/vends x2 [goods/service/commodity] to buyer x3 for amount/cost/expense x4 x1 takes revenge on/retaliates against x2 (person) for wrong x3

x1 (object/event) is important/significant to x2 (person/event) in aspect/for reason x3 (nu/ka) x1 is a word meaning/causing x2 in language x3; (adjective: x1 is lexical/verbal) x1 (ind./mass) is part of an environment/surroundings/context/ambience of x2 x1 is made of/contains/is a quantity of wine from fruit/grapes x2

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Appendix B. Vocabulary
xabju xadba xadni xajmi xalfekfri xalka xamgu

dwell half body funny drunk alcohol good nervous elephant letter 5th conversion hate Greek Hindi bad influences number? Arabic truefalse? chemical chemistry red x medium time approve make nest amusing 7 medium time interval short time interval kind

xatra xe

xanto

xanka

xebni xelso xendo

xlura xo

xlali

xindo

xukmi xumske xunre za xy

xu

xrabo

zbasu zdani

zanru

zdile ze

zea zei

influence/threat/lure x4 digit/number: number/digit/lerfu question x1 reflects Arabic-speaking culture/nationality in aspect x2 discursive: truefalse question x1 is an instance of substance/chemical/drug x2 (individual or mass) with purity x3 x1 is chemistry based on methodology x2 (xukmi chemical + saske science) x1 is red/crimson/ruddy [color adjective] letteral for x time tense distance: medium distance in time x1 approves of/gives favor to plan/action x2 (object/event) x1 makes/assembles/builds/manufactures/creates x2 out of materials/parts/components x3 x1 is a nest/house/lair/den/[home] of/for x2 x1 (abstract) is amusing/entertaining to x2 in property/aspect x3; x3 is what amuses x2 about x1 digit/number: 7 time tense interval: a medium length of time

x1 is inebriated, drunk (xalka alcohol + fenki crazy + lifri experience) x1 is a quantity of/contains/is made of alcohol of type x2 from source/process x3 x1 is good/beneficial/acceptable for x2 by standard x3 x1 is nervous/anxious about x2 (abstraction) under conditions x3 x1 is an elephant of species/breed x2 x1 is a letter/missive/[note] to intended audience x2 from author/originator x3 with content x4 5th conversion; switch 1st/5th places x1 hates/despises x2 (object/abstraction); x1 is full of hate for x2; x2 is odious to x1 x1 reflects Greek/Hellenic culture/nationality/language in aspect x2 x1 (person) is kind to x2 in actions/behavior x3 x1 reflects Hindi language/culture/religion in aspect x2 x1 is bad for x2 by standard x3; x1 is poor/unacceptable to x2 x1 (agent) influences/lures/tempts x2 into action/state x3 by

x1 dwells/lives/resides/abides at/inhabits/is a resident of location/habitat/nest/home/abode x2 x1 is exactly/approximately half/semi-/demi-/hemi- of x2 by standard x3 x1 is a/the body/corpus/corpse of x2; (adjective:) x1 is corporal/corporeal x1 is funny/comical to x2 in property/aspect x3 (nu/ka); x3 is what is funny about x1 to x2

time tense interval: an instantaneous/tiny/short amount of time

210

Appendix B. Vocabulary
zekri zergle zerlea

crime sexual crime steal

zgana zgike

zeu

long time interval observe music short time relative clause joiner purple purplest more one-word quote unspecified it non-Lojban quote humorously long time on the left of sit on the one hand at z

zie zirpu

zi

x1 (event/state) is a punishable crime/[taboo/sin] to people/culture/judges/jury x2 x1 copulates with x2, which is a punishable crime to people/culture/judges/jury x3 (zekri crime + gletu copulate) x1 takes/gets/gains/obtains/seizes/[removes] x2 (object/property) from x3 (possessor), which is a punishable crime/[taboo/sin] to people/culture/judges/jury x4 (zekri crime + lebna take) time tense interval: a long amount of time x1 observes/[notices]/watches/beholds x2 using senses/means x3 under conditions x4 x1 is music performed/produced by x2 (event) time tense distance: instantaneous-to-short distance in time joins relative clauses which apply to the same sumti x1 is purple/violet [color adjective] x1 is the most purple/violet [color adjective] among set/range x2

ziryrai zmadu zo zoe zoi zoo

zy

zvati

zuu

zutse

zua

zu

discursive: on the one hand on the other hand x1 (object/event) is at/attending/present at x2 (event/location) letteral for z

(zirpu purple + traji superlative) x1 exceeds/is more than x2 in property/quantity x3 (ka/ni) by amount/excess x4 quote next word only; quotes a single Lojban word (not a cmavo compound or tanru) pro-sumti: an elliptical/unspecified value; has some value which makes bridi true delimited non-Lojban quotation; the result treated as a block of text attitudinal modifier: humorously dully seriously time tense distance: long distance in time location tense relation/direction; leftwards/to the left of ... x1 sits [assumes sitting position] on surface x2

211